TODAY: In 1849, Honoré de Balzac travels to Poland to meet Eveline Hanska, whom he will marry shortly before his death the following year.
- How much history do you need in your historical fiction? Hannah Kent searches for her main character. | Literary Hub
- Can comedy news shows actually accomplish anything? | Literary Hub
- 10 gritty NYC crime novels that take you into the world of The Deuce. | Literary Hub
- On the trials and triumphs of writing Saul Bellow’s biography while he was still alive. | Literary Hub
- More than the Beauty or the Heroine: On female friendship and complicating traditional tropes of girlhood. | Literary Hub
- The 2017 Kirkus Prize finalists have been announced, as have the winners of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize. | Kirkus, The Paris Review
- The Whiting Foundation has announced a new series of grants for nonprofit American magazines. | The New York Times
- “You don’t have to tell anyone on social media what you are reading.” On embracing the freedom to read books that are Not for You. | Full Stop
- “Sparking the movie to emotional life are the heroes of Ex Libris: librarians.” On Frederick Wiseman’s (seemingly inevitable) 42nd film. | The Nation
- The internet has found yet another reason to love Margaret Atwood (and the purse she wore on stage at the Emmys). | InStyle
- “When I read the two biographies on Jimi Hendrix I was like: Let me tell my story myself. And that just came up with the idea, and I just started writing, and I wrote like 30, 40 pages.” Gucci Mane on his new autobiography. | NPR
- I pretend Huma is my daughter: A short story by Rebecca Schiff. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “It could have been written only by an artist who knows how to balance his values.” A 1920 review of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut novel, This Side of Paradise. | Book Marks
