Lit Hub Daily: March 11, 2022

TODAY: In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun becomes the first play written and acted by African Americans to show on Broadway.  

• “Sing to me, Ukraine.” Five poems by Boris Khersonsky. | Lit Hub Ukraine

• KEROUAC AT 100: Rarely seen archival material from Kerouac’s publisher (“The book, I prophesy, will get mixed but interested reviews.”) • A retelling of Kerouac’s funeral (“I hoped that no one would ever mourn me so self-centeredly.”) | Lit Hub

• Lessons in comedic timing from New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress. | Lit Hub

• “There’s a whiff of uncoolness to admitting you like it.” As the film adaptation of Howards End turns 30, Sara Batkie sings its praises. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Helen Rappaport on café life in 1900s Paris, when the city was a refuge for Russian artists and dissidents. | Lit Hub History

• A decade after first stealing like an artist, Austin Kleon looks back. | Lit Hub

• NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory, Karen Joy Fowler’s Booth, Elizabeth Williamson’s Sandy Hook, and Amy Bloom’s In Love all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• “It’s the dose that kills.” Kit Mayquist on historical poisons, plants, and medicines. | CrimeReads

• Edith Wharton’s advice for writing a vivid first line. | Lit Hub Craft

• Michael A. Gonzales on the undersung work and too-short life of Diane Oliver, who wrote short stories about the horrors of racism perpetrated on Black families in suburban America. | The Bitter Southerner

• Literary translators are working quickly to bring the work of Ukrainian novelists poets, and historians to English-speaking audiences. | The New York Times

• “These artists know how to combine naked confessionalism and comic artifice to tap veins of hungry emotion—anger, fear, and, particularly, deep sadness.” Anandi Mishra on the stories women tell of loneliness. | Public Books

• Will Burns surveys the literature of the pub, from The Canterbury Tales to Lucky Jim and beyond. | The Baffler

• 20 books that blend the lines between sci-fi and other genres. | Book Riot

• Katerina Sergatskova speaks to the reality of life under the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where books have become barricades. | The Guardian

• Clementine Thomas talks about running a food-centric bookstore and her favorite cookbooks. | Washingtonian

Also on Lit Hub: The Batman is first and foremost a detective story • A poem by Olga Sedakova (tr. Martha Kelly) • Read from Maayan Eitan’s debut novel, Love

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