TODAY: In 1749, the tenth and final volume of Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones is published.
- In honor of MOTHER’S DAY this Sunday, some of the many ways of looking at motherhood: • Tobias Wolff on the iconic memoir he never intended to write • Courtney Maum and Michele Filgate discuss what mothers and children owe each other • John McMurtrie finds his mother in the pages of her favorite cookbook • The stories mothers never tell: a collaborative essay • “Original Fire,” a poem by Louise Erdrich • Sarah Knott, in the moments after birth • When your daughter refuses to be in your essay. | Lit Hub
- “It is a loss of privacy that has the greatest ability to destroy an artist.” Esi Edugyan on the fraught relationship between the writer and the void. | Lit Hub
- On the debut of The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on Lit Hub Radio, Mitchell talks to Nathaniel Rich about the climate science we’ve known and ignored. | Lit Hub
- Ted Chiang, George Packer, Harper Lee, and Dr. Seuss all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- A husband-and-wife spy duo, a plot to explode the moon, and Harper Lee’s lost true crime book: Here’s all the true crime and non-fiction you need to read this May. | CrimeReads
- “This is the danger that I live for, the bad words with definitions forever in flux, words that show us how tonal and relational English can be.” Danez Smith on the joy and trauma of the word “bitch.” | The Paris Review
- So, how exactly has Danielle Steel managed to write 179 books? Hint: it might have to do with her epic desk. | Glamour, The Hub
- “It might be easy to be an invited guest, but to be uninvited and reliant on others must be hard for anyone”: Guest editor Björk highlights one of the writings that inspires her, a memoir by Oddný Eir that blends philosophy, history and nature writing. | AnOther
- With the recent opening of the first UK exhibition to focus on Kathy Acker, Brit Dawson draws on the countercultural author’s work to explore her controversial legacy. | Dazed
- “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” Reading Mary Oliver in the age of distraction. | The Atlantic
- “Resistance Lit is beatifically, obliviously earnest and impervious to snark.” On Resistance Lit, one of the lesser curses of the Trump Era. | The Outline
- Karen Russell would like to recommend superstitions—”not because they change the future, but because they articulate a wish.” | The New York Times Magazine
Also on Lit Hub: Author photos: a taxonomy • Lit Hub Recommends • Read from Lucy Ives’ new novel, Loudermilk.
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