TODAY: In 1986, poet John Ciardi, also known for his translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, dies.
- An agent’s lament: My year in Donald Trump-themed novel queries. | Lit Hub
- Why the world’s cities are teeming with exotic wildlife more than ever. | Lit Hub
- Lit Hub staff picks: our favorite stories of the month. | Lit Hub
- As baseball season begins, a look back at the hard-drinking Yankees of the 1950s. | Lit Hub
- Byzantium dynasties, the spies next door, and more: 12 crime shows premiering and returning this month. | CrimeReads
- From the “unbelievably tense” Tangerine to Nell Scovell’s “demystifying glimpse into the world . . . behind the comedy curtain,” these are the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- On Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair, John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies, and Tim Murphy’s Christodora—three novels that “connect recent queer history with contemporary gay life.” | Longreads
- “They wanted to rob us of knowledge.” Rebuilding literary culture in Mosul, 8 months after the end of the ISIS occupation. | New York Review of Books
- Amazon reveals itself as the prude you always knew it was by removing erotica from its bestseller lists. | Motherboard
- “I didn’t really realize that I wrote about food so much until other people started mentioning it.” Elaine Castillo on cuisine as culture, canned food, and colonialism in the Philippines. | Taste
- “Not feeling a fixed national identity can free up many areas of life.” A profile of literary translator Christina MacSweeney. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “She bounded & pranced in what we took to be wild / joy before we understood what truly moved her.” A poem by Camille T. Dungy. | The Boston Review
- “She taught me that poets are born in childhood, that children recognize injustice early, and that writing it down won’t save us, but it might help.” On answering the call of Audre Lorde. | Critical Read
