Lit Hub Daily: May 2, 2022

TODAY: In 1936, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s work in progress, Conversations at Midnight, is burned in a hotel fire on Sanibel Island, Florida.  

• “My great hope is that a generation of courageous writers will reveal that there is more humanity than barbarity in Putin’s Russia.” Marcia DeSanctis tries to reconcile her love of Russian lit with Putin’s ascendancy. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• From true crime to giant snakes to Sally Rooney, May’s literary film and TV has something for everyone. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• “I can write anywhere. Except with my wife looking over my shoulder.” Andrea Bajani on writing, solitude, and forgiveness. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Conveying the uncanny and mysterious: Jeff VanderMeer talks to the designers of his book covers. | Lit Hub Design

• What can animals show us about more meaningfully encountering the wider world? | Lit Hub Nature

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• “It’s almost absurd to present Emar as a forgotten writer, since he has never been, so to speak, sufficiently remembered.” Alejandro Zambra in praise of Juan Emar. | Lit Hub Criticism

• INTERVIEW WITH AN INDIE PRESS: Elizabeth Murphy, editor and publisher of Grid Books, on publishing poets with “decades of lived experience.” | Lit Hub

• New titles from Emma Straub, Holly Black, and Nghi Vo all feature among May’s best sci-fi and fantasy books. | Book Marks

• “Fine writing on the actual constituent elements of three-dimensionality is hard to find, pleasing to consume, and pleasurable to recommend.” Jo Livingstone on The Polyhedrists: Art and Geometry in the Long 16th Century. | 4Columns

• What dinner will look like in 100 years, according to sci-fi authors. | Bon Appetit

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• Jackie Mansky considers the perennial appeal of Choose Your Own Adventure stories. | Zócalo Public Square

• “The reality is that women aren’t killed by time-traveling serial killers; it’s our loved ones killing us.” Lauren Beukes discusses the television adaptation of her novel The Shining Girls. | Esquire

• Neil Gaiman lists the books that changed his life. | The Guardian

• Hannah Chute talks about the process of translating graphic novels from French into English. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Victoria Baena looks at Letters to Gwen John, an epistolary book in which Celia Paul “offers new ways of seeing.” | The Baffler

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Also on Lit Hub: How celebrated Black opera singer Sissieretta Jones enshrined her own story • Elisha Cooper on coming to terms with what killed his brother • Read from Alyssa Songsiridej’s debut novel, Little Rabbit

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