Lit Hub Daily: November 20, 2018

• From Hellcat Maggie to the Great Sandwina, Katrina Carrasco on the outlaw women who inspired her protagonist. | Lit Hub
• “The Russian population saw their leader as a bold and sexy alpha male. Bolder, sexier, more alpha than any other world leader.” Lara Vapnyar on the manufactured “sex-appeal” of Vladimir Putin. | Lit Hub
• Hair of the dog, ash of the scorpion, and not-vulgar sex: a tour of hangover cures through the ages. | Lit Hub
• “Obtaining the cannabis may present certain difficulties.” Alice B. Toklas’ hash brownies recipe is the Thanksgiving miracle we all need. | Lit Hub
• Bethany Layne talks to David Lodge about the art of fictionalizing a life, and the limits of biofiction. | Lit Hub
• Alethea Black, Michele Lent Hirsch, Sonya Huber, Abby Norman, Julie Rehmeyer, and Esme Weijun Wang on what it means to write about women’s pain (part two). | Lit Hub
• “Human kindness is often simply a side effect of liability prevention.” Mikita Brottman on the ripple effect of death in a hotel. | Lit Hub
• The War Before the War author Andrew Delbanco talks about five classic American novels that he enjoys teaching, from Moby-Dick to Native Son. | Book Marks
• What to binge while you’re binging: all the crime shows to watch this Thanksgiving break. | CrimeReads
• “I’m not interested in character because I don’t think character exists anymore.” Rachel Cusk brings some highly controversial opinions in this interview. | The New Yorker
• Newly discovered stories by Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Cairo Trilogy, will be published later this year. | Egyptian Streets
• Ida Vitale, the last surviving member of the Uruguayan art movement known as the “Generation of 45”, wins the Miguel de Cervantes prize. | Euro Weekly News
• “Starvation and suffering also get you high, visionary, and even playful. Work, astonishingly hard work, is part of this writer’s kit.” Eileen Myles on Can Xue’s Love in the New Millennium. | The Paris Review
• “I wanted to examine what it means to write a woman character who is not nice, maternal, easily moved to kindness.” Read an interview with Booker Prize finalist Daisy Johnson. | The Rumpus
• Dana Gioia, California’s poet laureate, helped invent the Jello Jiggler, won’t abide Google maps. | LAist
• Hungry for 2019? Tide yourself over with ten of the best books about food from the year that was (and still, regrettably, is). | Smithsonian

Also on Lit Hub: The woman (and the story) behind Degas’ Little Dancer • See the cover of Pola Oloixarac’s forthcoming novel, Dark Constellations • Read from The Naked Woman