TODAY: In 1969, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Soviet Writers Union.
- “The aftereffects of an evil dictatorship are hard to get rid of, to scrub clean. It usually involves a steadfast struggle, and justice is really the only remedy.” Francisco Goldman on the fall of Donald Trump. | Lit Hub Politics
- “I feel an intimate concern for the book, even as its objecthood is changing.” Sarah Haas on what a book can be. | Lit Hub
- “Her fear of failure is deep and frightening. But something else is getting outed too: her desire not to be ordinary, her desire to be great.” On George Eliot, who was great. | Lit Hub
- “I was presented, from as early as I can remember, with books of my own, on my birthday and Christmas morning.” Shocker: Eudora Welty read from a very early age. | Lit Hub
- The women who resisted the Nazis in Britain’s Channel Islands: The life and times of Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe. | Lit Hub History
- Intriguing insights into new books by Yaa Gyasi, Sayaka Murata, Kevin Young, and more | Book Marks
- Lynne Truss examines the most unusual murder weapons in crime fiction. | CrimeReads
- Eliseu Cavalcante’s photo essay on endangered mangrove forests and communities in Brazil draws inspiration from Josué de Castro’s 1967 book Of Men and Crabs. | Words Without Borders
- Joan Drury, writer, publisher, and bookstore owner, has died at 75. | Twin Cities
- “She chose the literary life over love, family, and even her health, writing through illness and pain. Yet Austin never became the Thoreau of the West, as she’d hoped.” Joy Lanzendorfer on the life of the early (and mostly forgotten) nature writer Mary Austin. | Alta
- “Foraging felt like empowerment and self-sufficiency—a form of resourceful thrift familiar to me as the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and a small measure of control when so much has felt out of control.” Vanessa Hua on foraging in America. | Zora
- “The boundaries between prank, hoax, agitprop and literary or art-world experiment . . . have become blurrier in the digital age.” On the “literary” origins of QAnon. | The Telegraph
- “I know from poetry that it’s often when I’m trying the least to be ‘poetic’ that the most charged truths emerge.” Chen Chen on fear and essay-writing. | Poets & Writers
- “When hell is other people, foraging reminds me of the connections we share.” Vanessa Hua on uncertainty, survival, and persistence. | ZORA
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