TODAY: In 1904, novelist Graham Greene is born.
- Armistead Maupin on growing up gay in a proud southern family. | Literary Hub
- All memoir titles should be Fleetwood Mac songs: Emily Gould talks to Minna Zallman Proctor about Landslide. | Literary Hub
- Paul Auster: “I’m not sure the New York Trilogy is even very good.” | Literary Hub
- Riding along with the donkey-powered mobile libraries of Zimbabwe. | Literary Hub
- “It is remarkable that he wrote the book at all.” Read a 1952 review of George Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia. | Book Marks
- “Their genius lies in an ability to suspend their skepticism over the long haul, to persist in the belief that—no matter how hard things get—the work is meaningful, and worthwhile, and will one day pan out.” What Joe Fassler learned from interviewing more than 150 authors. | The Atlantic
- A school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts has turned down Melania Trump’s donation of 10 Dr. Seuss books. | The Mary Sue
- “McPhee’s work is not melancholy, macabre, sad or defeatist. It is full of life. Learning, for him, is a way of loving the world, savoring it, before it’s gone.” A profile of John McPhee. | The New York Times Magazine
- “If I were an 18-year-old, I probably would have killed myself.” Speaking with Lani Sarem, author of Handbook for Mortals, the controversial YA book that was removed from the New York Times best-seller’s list for attempting to game the system. | Vulture
- Two violinist sisters claim to have solved the musical mystery in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. | The Guardian
- “As we come together to bury Hugh Hefner, let us admit that his greatest legacy lies in the writing done about him by women.” On the real stars of Playboy. | The New Republic
- From Alyssa Wong to Carmen Maria Machado, six works of short fiction that defy convention. | Tor
Also on Lit Hub: William Burroughs did not like Truman Capote: the ugly art of the open hate letter · Hayley Singer on art, animals, and stories of death · From a new anthology of Tibetan fiction, a story by Tenzin Tsundue.
