TODAY: In 1897, Henry James’ novel What Maisie Knew is published.
- “In late June my children made cardboard signs to carry at a silent BLM march that drew an estimated 60,000. Not a single scratch was reported.” Claudia Castro Luna on Seattle’s season of peaceful protest. | Lit Hub Politics
- “Realism is not a binary. It is at a minimum a spectrum.” Lincoln Michel proposes a new way to think about fictional worlds. | Lit Hub Craft
- “Today’s Republicans . . . have more ideological connections with the slaveholding southern Democrats of the 1860s than they do with Lincoln’s party.” Peter Balakian on the party of Lincoln’s “Big Government” origins. | Lit Hub Politics
- How a 1960s sci-fi fable expanded the meaning of Cuban pilgrimages: Yoss on Miguel Collazo’s The Journey. | Lit Hub Criticism
- On the time Jimi Hendrix took the UK by storm (and Eric Clapton realized he may have to hand over the crown). | Lit Hub Music
- “During the decade or so when I was trying, and failing, to get sober, reading books about addiction became a kind of therapy.” Erica Barnett on the books that helped her in recovery. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “I have some anarchist instinct, some righteous impulse toward disorder.” Alexandra Schwartz profiles Ayad Akhtar. | The New Yorker
- Your periodic reminder that Shakespeare’s works are full of gardening wisdom. | New Statesman
- Three designers on revamping the covers for George Orwell’s classic novels. | SPINE
- “It’s one thing to lie to yourself, but it’s another thing to lie to yourself in a way that makes a system of inequality run more smoothly.” Eula Biss talks about race, class, and self-deception. | The Nation
- Fantasy fans remember Charles R. Saunders, a “genius Black man writing sword and sorcery fantasy set in Africa.” | CBC
- Julio Villanueva Chang profiles Lima’s oldest life drawing model. | Words Without Borders
- The poet Mascha Kaléko (the subject of a recent Google doodle) is often remembered for her contributions to the 20th-century German literary avant-garde and for refusing a prize from a committee that included a former Nazi. | Mirror
