TODAY: In 1943, playwright Sam Shepard is born.
- MTA vs. MFA: an argument for the train as the next great creative workspace. | Lit Hub
- “They don’t kill us because of how we pray.” On Pittsburgh, otherness, and the virulence of anti-Semitism. | Lit Hub
- “I chose my writing over hers—isn’t this what creative people are supposed to do?” Laura Esther Wolfson on almost being Svetlana Alexievich’s translator. | Lit Hub
- Following the evolution of haiku, from Bashō to Salinger and everything in between. | Lit Hub
- On But That’s Another Story, Sam Anderson talks to Will Schwalbe about the most interesting place in America, and how The Art of the Personal Essay changed his life. | Lit Hub
- “Twenty-Three Things About W.H. Auden.” A prose poem by Bill Berkson from his memoir, Since When. | Lit Hub
- From The Hate U Give to New York 2140, 12 Novels to Remind You What’s at Stake Tomorrow. | Book Marks
- From ghost stories and haunted houses to Southern Gothic fables, Wendy Webb recommends 8 modern gothic mysteries to keep you reading all winter long. | CrimeReads
- A first edition of The Brothers Karamazov, Nabokov’s Alice in Wonderland, Russia’s first homoerotic novel: highlights from “the last great private collection of Russian literature to come out of America,” which goes up for auction this month. | Christie’s
- “Just then, Captain America soars in with a “Kraash!” and battles the hoard of Nazis one by one.” Inside a new compilation of the comics that taught a generation of American teens about the Holocaust. | HuffPost
- “Work hard and you’ll be happy, and then you’ll get money, and then you can keep working, just for fun”: The capitalist message of The Boxcar Children. | The New Yorker
- “Now that Michelle Obama is free, I look forward to her going high—and kicking back.” Kiese Laymon on the former First Lady’s legacy, and his hopes for her future. | Vanity Fair
- A reading list for the end of the world (or, at the very least, for a time of extreme crisis). | The Rumpus
- “There is no closure here.” Read an interview with poet Erica Dawson. | LARB
- Art book publishers say they were harassed by TSA because they were traveling with copies of a book by the political artist Marlos E’van. | Hyperallergic
Also on Lit Hub: Secrets of the book designer: Donna Cheng on designing the cover for Tell Me Lies • Meet National Book Award in Poetry finalists Diana Khoi Nguyen and Rae Armantrout • Read from Paradise Rot
