TODAY: In 2001, novelist John Knowles dies.
- On Fiction/Non/Fiction, Madeline Miller discusses women’s work, translation, and gender in The Odyssey; with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan. | Lit Hub
- “I felt myself to be a much more fearful and tender reader at 57 than I was at 20.” Helen Schulman on As I Lay Dying, for today’s edition of The Avid Reader. | Lit Hub
- “I’m still not convinced that peaceful protest is the only way to go.” Adam Nemett on student activism, sousaphone-as-protest instrument, and his new novel, We Can Save Us All. | Lit Hub
- “Travel writing, by a Nigerian who travels in parts of Africa, is a means of repair.” Emmanuel Iduma surveys the complicated oeuvre of African travel writing. | Lit Hub
- The owners of Point Reyes Books on the limits of categorization, fighting dystopian creep, and the power of a small-town bookstore. | Lit Hub
- “I sat back, hit ‘tweet’ and just like that my family history began to enter the public conversation.” Turning a diary from 1930s Berlin into a Twitter feed. | Lit Hub
- “Do not ask if you can take the shrink wrap off of the big book of 3D butts.” And other advice for holiday shopping at your local independent bookstore, from CrimeReads editor and former bookseller Molly Odintz. | CrimeReads
- Broken Amazon employees, fugitive slaves, a history of American torture, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Our Literature in Translation Columnist Heather Cleary and Open Letter Books Publisher Chad Post talk Macedonio Fernández, Dubravka Ugresic, Mathias Énard, and more. | Book Marks
- Because we’re already living in a capitalist dystopia, Margaret Atwood will publish a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale in 2019. | The Guardian
- “You think: ‘Here is a woman who really knows what it’s like to vomit.’” Patricia Lockwood on Lucia Berlin. | London Review of Books
- Two new books seek to moderate revisionist histories of the American Civil War. | New Republic
- Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson’s brisk literary history of Iceland. | Electric Literature
- Herman Melville’s 1855 novella Benito Cereno will be adapted into a television show . . . set IN SPACE. | Deadline
- “The fact is, screenplays are usually committee affairs.” On William Goldman and the mysteries of screenwriting. | JSTOR
- “Ping-pong is fast, reactive. Literature is slow and dreamlike. But both transcend ordinary reality.” From Nabovok to Updike, fiction writers love a nice game of table tennis. | Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Also on Lit Hub: Trump’s radical remaking of America • Can you measure the happiness of your favorite story? • Read from Tell Them of Battles, Kings, & Elephants
