TODAY: In 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley is “rusticated” (temporarily expelled) from Oxford for publishing The Necessity of Atheism.
- “I felt as though I’d given away my diary. As if I’d thrown my children off a bridge.” Julie Langsdorf on the illicit, bittersweet pleasure of empty bookshelves. | Lit Hub
- TigerBeat, lip gloss, and tinges of sorrow: how the designer of T Kira Madden’s Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls found the cover’s glitter. | Lit Hub
- Deep time on the Orkney Islands: Laura Watts on energy uncertainty in remote communities. | Lit Hub
- “This goes on until death, or until I get a hobby.” Meet the host of the podcast for people with no attention span. | Lit Hub
- Tim Liu remembers brilliant poet and teacher Linda Gregg; read her poem “Asking for Directions.” | Lit Hub
- Western vs. noir: how two film genres shaped postwar American culture. | Lit Hub
- “The signs are big and bleak. No Go. Stay away. And we do.” How the West has drawn a new global map based on fear. | Lit Hub
- Revisiting Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind on the occasion of the beloved poet, publisher, and activist’s 100th birthday. | Book Marks
- “Hanssen counted his money at his FBI desk, laughing while the FBI looked for him in all the wrong places.” Eric O’Neill on America’s most notorious spy. | CrimeReads
- For her ongoing efforts to combat workplace harassment, Anita Hill will receive the PEN Courage Award. | PEN America
- “She’s a businesswoman, albeit one with purple nails”: Read a profile of Selwa Anthony, the elusive literary agent who was recently at the losing end of two sensational court cases in Australia. | The Sydney Morning Herald
- Fake cancer, real award: Dan Mallory has been shortlisted for the British Book Awards. | iNews
- “My work is focused on Americana. But I also hate it, and it hates me back.” Morgan Parker shares the images that “feed her audacity and fuel her despair.” | Guernica
- Andrew Martin on the enduring cultural relevance of Baltimore, and “the devil’s bargain of a city that operates as a laboratory for bold visions in exchange for social and economic precariousness.” | T Magazine
- “Immigration is one of the most ordinary human experiences there is. It shouldn’t be treated as exotic.” Read an interview with Laila Lalami. | The Guardian
- We may venerate him as the greatest writer of all time, but there are a lot of things Shakespeare left out of his work. Moms, for instance. | The Mary Sue
Also on Lit Hub: On Literary Disco, Mallory O’Meara on finding the woman who designed the one of Hollywood’s classic monsters • Richard Blanco: “I don’t subscribe to the notion of writer’s block” • A poem by Ed Bok Lee from his collection Mitochondiral Night • Read from Boy Swallows Universe.
