Lit Hub Daily: November 23, 2022

TODAY: In 1891, Japanese playwright, poet, and author Masao Kume is born.  

• Eleanor Lanahan on discovering the hidden artistic talents of her grandmother: the one and only Zelda Fitzgerald. | Lit Hub Art

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• What T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf first made of each other. | Lit Hub Biography

• How Thomas Jefferson, consummate storyteller, shaped colonial America’s story of itself. | Lit Hub History

• Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, and more films that inspired “lady director” Joyce Chopra. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Annie Barrows reflects on creating the Ivy + Bean book series and finding fodder in her daughters’ antics. | Lit Hub

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• Shahan Mufti travels back to the summer of 1959, when a public television docuseries introduced the Nation of Islam to America. | Lit Hub Religion

• Jefferson Cowie on the Southern practice of convict leasing, just one form of “terror that filled the void” after the collapse of Reconstruction. | Lit Hub History

• “I feel like the handmaiden of the subconscious. I’m just there to receive whatever it feels like sending.” George Saunders on inspiration. | Bookforum

• Hephzibah Anderson looks back at The Well of Loneliness, a “beacon” of self-discovery for many. | BBC

• “What makes the book controversial is exactly what makes it valuable.” Hillary Chute considers Art Spiegelman’s Maus. | The Atlantic

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• Ashawnta Jackson examines the “fakelore” behind certain assumptions about food, recipes, and culture. | JSTOR Daily

• Hunter Biden’s laptop repairman is on a book tour, but don’t worry: Fox News is on it. | The New Republic

• “Joy is what emanates from us as we help each other carry our sorrows. Joy understands that no one is without sorrow. Period. Everyone’s heartbroken.” Ross Gay on living a joyful life. | Esquire

• More than 300 Iranian translators have expressed their solidarity with the country’s protest movement and “vowed to deliver the books and texts the regime prevented from being published to citizens in any way possible.” | Iran International

Also on Lit Hub: Celeste Ng on writing with a plan • A poem by Camonghne Felix • Read from Marcel Béalu’s newly translated novella, The Impersonal Adventure (tr. George Maclennan) 

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