TODAY: In 1897, Bram Stoker stages a reading of a dramatized version of “The Un-Dead” (before publication later that month, it was changed to Dracula) at the Lyceum Theatre in London.
- Michael Moorcock on the eerie prophecyof his friend, Ray Bradbury. | Lit Hub
- Is the opening paragraph of True Grit… perfect? Emily Temple does a close reading of Charles Portis’s classic. | Lit Hub
- Louise Penny: How I survived a fearful childhoodin the pages of Charlotte’s Web. | Lit Hub
- How getting out of your genre comfort zonemakes you a better reader (and writer). | Lit Hub
- Nathan Goldman on W.G. Sebald’s masterful use of punctuation, and the power of his small silences. | Lit Hub
- Academic, killer, thief: On the failed campaign to save the last man publicly-executed in New York. | CrimeReads
- William Trevor’s final stories, Michelle Tea’s confessions, a biography of Robin Williams, and more: The 10 best-reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- “I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing.” A rare, spare interview with Elena Ferrante. | LA Times
- “Could any other popular narrative genre be so given to a critique of Americanism and forgiven for it, celebrated for it?” Nicholas Dames on the spy novel. | n+1
- “Well, I ended up reading a lot of classical erotica by the age of 16 because that’s where lesbians seemed to make appearances.” Yelena Moskovich on building her own lesbian literary canon. | The Paris Review
- R.O. Kwon, Judy Blundell, Masih Alinejad, and James A. McLaughlin are writers to watch out for this summer. | The New York Times
- “Like religion, writing fiction is an incredibly irrational and desperate thing to invest in.” Lincoln Michel interviews Rita Bullwinkel. | BOMB Magazine
- Elisabeth Moss is set to play Shirley Jackson in a thriller based Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel Shirley. | Hollywood Reporter
- She saw the humanity, the humor, the stories in us so that I could, too: Hilal Isler on seeing herself in the writing of Elif Batuman. | Electric Literature
