TODAY: In 1619, French novelist, playwright, and duelist Cyrano de Bergerac, the inspiration for Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac is born.
- “What matters is invisible, the work you do day by day in solitude.” Garth Greenwell on what it is to live the writer’s life. | Lit Hub
- It’s time we talk about librarians and money: Kristen Arnett on working long hours for low pay. | Lit Hub
- From myths to memes, Tabitha Prado-Richardson, Capricorn, wonders, who needs astrology? | Lit Hub
- “In December, the city of my birth smells of charred remains.” On the vulnerability of home on an afflicted planet, from Calcutta to California. | Lit Hub
- “Though I do not enjoy writing ‘moral tales’ for the young, I do it because it pays well.” Louisa May Alcott’s (surprisingly practical) advice to a young writer. | Lit Hub
- “[A]fter One Hundred Years he began to be another person.” Remembering the birth of Gabo on the birthday of Gabriel García Márquez. | Lit Hub
- Stieglitz, O’Keeffe, a revolutionary photo show, and the foursome that followed. | Lit Hub
- “The journey home is always a journey to the well we came from.” Greg Iles on the meaning of home, the lure of sweeping crime epics, and the Mississippi River. | CrimeReads
- The Nobel Foundation and the Swedish Academy have announced that they will present two Nobel Prizes in Literature this year, to make up for last year, when they had to cancel the prize due to a sexual misconduct scandal. | Publishers Weekly
- “I always found Dorothy to be a bit of a feckless brat. She cries a lot, and she can’t follow directions, and she stole a dead woman’s shoes.” T Kira Madden on what the Wicked Witch of the West taught her about love (and lust). | NYLON
- The Who’s Pete Townshend has written a multimedia novel that “deals with mythic and operatic themes including a maze, divine madness, and long-lost children,” and is coming to you this fall. | Stereogum
- “On one page, the book baselessly claims that the United States government created AIDS, polio, Lyme disease […], and the Pixar movie Monsters Inc.” Amazon’s algorithm has pushed a Qanon conspiracy book up its charts. | NBC News
- “I’m trying to shape the language to represent my experience, one that’s grounded in the oral tradition as much as the literary.” Read an interview with Mitchell S. Jackson. | Poets & Writer
- United for Libraries will honor Ray Bradbury by dedicating a park he frequented as a child as a Literary Landmark. | Chicago Tribune
- “These mythologies are not harmless”: The problem of “unlovable” Wesley Yang. | Jezebel
Also on Lit Hub: On Translating A Room of One’s Own into Romanian • Why it’s a mistake to define Virginia Woolf by her depression • On Otherppl, Sam Lipsyte talks fitting it all into a novel • Reading Women‘s Australia Episode • Read from The River
