Lit Hub Daily: October 21, 2022

TODAY: In 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is published. 

• The art of pornography: Steven Heller recalls being arrested, as a minor, for his art direction on the underground sex paper Screw. | Lit Hub Memoir

• “Every woman who enjoys horror films has at some point felt the need to explain herself.” Elizabeth Horkley revisits Kier-La Janisse’s House of Psychotic Women, ten years later. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Veteran Reporter Margaret Sullivan recommends her favorite books about journalism. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “O Captain! my Captain!” How Abraham Lincoln’s followers and adversaries responded to his untimely death. | Lit Hub History

• Mary Karr’s advice for navigating the fallibility of memory in memoir. | Lit Hub

• Ruth M. Glenn, CEO and President of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, discusses how friends and family can support survivors of domestic violence. | Lit Hub In Conversation

• “No music will live if it is treated like a museum piece.” Elizabeth Ford on disrupting tradition and creating new Appalachian ballads. | Lit Hub Music

• Rita Zoey Chin on learning to ask better questions (about writing, and life) with the help of oracle cards. | Lit Hub

• Which international thriller should you binge this weekend? CrimeReads editor-in-chief Dwyer Murphy has some suggestions. | CrimeReads

• Ken Burns on good adaptations and the Great American Novel: “But what about O Pioneers! or My Ántonia? For that matter, what about Gabriel García Márquez?’” | The New York Times

• In the new issue of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Aisha Ashraf reflects on a haunting memory and her father’s bipolar diagnosis. | Dorothy Parker’s Ashes 

• Devoney Looser dives into the forgotten history of Jane and Anna Maria Porter, British sisters who pioneered the historical novel. | Smithsonian Magazine

• If you’re grappling with literary rejection, don’t forget: the poem that launched Edna St. Vincent Millay’s career also lost her a poetry contest. | JSTOR Daily

• Melissa Febos and Denise Kripper trade cultural recommendations, from Portrait of a Lady on Fire to Las malas. | Astra

• What are the scariest books of all time? | Book Riot

• “I’m trying to shift the conversation about abortion away from controlling women’s bodies and legislating women’s bodies.” Gabrielle Blair on her new book, Ejaculate Responsibly. | NPR

Also on Lit Hub: Steffan Triplett on doubles, in horror and queer life • Nine speculative stories from Asia and the Asian Diaspora • Read from Fatimah Asghar’s latest novel, When We Were Sisters

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