TODAY: In 1893, Wanda Gág, writer and illustrator of the children’s book Millions of Cats, the oldest American picture book still in print, is born.
- Going scene to scene in the streets of Vienna, Before Sunrise: Stephen Kelman journeys to the cinematic 90s. | Lit Hub
- “The idiosyncratic, eccentric, even oppositional posture of the creative artist is now an economic asset.” How “creativity” became a capitalist buzzword. | Lit Hub
- “I blame my first marriage on Jane Austen.” On fandom, folly, and the psychology of empathy. | Lit Hub
- Elizabeth McCracken, George Saunders, and more former Story Prize winners offer their thoughts on writing. | Lit Hub
- We are pleased to inform you that the oldest American picture book still in print is about (millions of) cats. | Lit Hub
- Remembering Rachel Ingalls in the wake of the Mrs. Caliban author’s passing last week. | Book Marks
- K.L. Slater recommends 10 thrillers about all-consuming obsession, from Stephen King’s Misery to Caroline Kepnes’ You. | CrimeReads
- “This is the kind of writer we need in desperate times: someone who can go deep into the subjects we would rather not think about, with both investigative rigor and human pathos.” Read a profile of John Lanchester. | Vulture
- “Seriously he would come to your door, William, and beat you up.” Joyce Johnson on navigating the male literary egos of 20th-century New York. | Evergreen Review
- On Emily Chester, the most famous novel by a female writer that no one remembers (and it’s probably Henry James’s fault). | Written Out
- Lana Del Rey says she is selling her self-published poetry collection for “$1 … because my thoughts are priceless.” | Jezebel
- The producers of American Crime Story have plans for a miniseries based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s book about Jean McConville, the IRA, and the Troubles. | The Irish News
- When Barnes & Nobles left the Bronx, Noëlle Santos launched a campaign to start her own indie bookstore. This is the story of the Lit. Bar, which opens this month. | Forbes
- “After 124 years it’s worth reconsidering what it’s adding to the cultural landscape.” Do we still need the Nobel Prize in literature? | Electric Literature
- “Each in her own way set out to adapt the Question of Love to her own bold and anarchic use”: Vivian Gornick on the romantic obsessions of Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and Marguerite Duras. | Boston Review
Also on Lit Hub: David Chariandy: A letter to my daughter upon learning the results of an ancestry test • A poem by Erica Meitner from her collection Holy Moly Carry Me • Read from Another Kind of Madness
