Lit Hub Daily: September 29, 2023

TODAY: In 1810, English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell is born.  

• The art of adaptation in Iowa City: Hannah Bonner introduces the (second annual) Refocus Film Festival. | Lit Hub Film

• “Desire is always silly, and self-serious, and enormous, and and and and and and.” Isle McElroy on the art of the sex scene. | Lit Hub Craft

• Trick or treat: 23 new books in paperback out this October. | The Hub

• Here’s the Literary Film & TV You Need to Stream in October, featuring Lessons in Chemistry, Killers of the Flower Moon, and spooky throwbacks. | Lit Hub

• “How do you end a book about an issue that we’re still desperately trying to figure out?” Rosanna Xia and Lizzie Johnson talk about turning their climate reporting into books. | Lit Hub Climate Change

• Tania Branigan considers how the Cultural Revolution played society against itself: “The trauma would not die with its victims: it had already replicated itself in their children, and their children’s children.” | Lit Hub History

• Why do we love meet cutes so much? Lauren Forsythe muses on romance fiction and love IRL. | Lit Hub

• Read “The Embassy Murders,” a new short story by Ariel Dorfman, which the author describes as “an embodiment of the metaverse.” | Index on Censorship

• Why isn’t Amazon flagging books written by AI? | Wired

• “The Prophet has always been and remains uniquely troublesome, and to call it the bestselling ‘poetry book’ of its century might be misleading.” Gus Mitchell on Kahlil Gibran’s perpetual best-seller. | JSTOR Daily

• Lily Meyer talks to Lydia Davis about Davis’s new collection Our Strangers, and the author’s stand against Amazon. | The Nation

• Tour Jennifer Egan’s home library. | The Washington Post

Also on Lit Hub: The best audiobooks of September • A poem by Lisa Olstein • Read from Eliza Clark’s latest novel, Penance

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