Lit Hub Weekly: February 3 - 7, 2020

• The strange tale of the Oxford professor and his student, the Oxford conman. | Lit Hub Biography
• Diana Preston’s day-by-day account of the historic Yalta Conference, 75 years later. | Lit Hub History
• Emily Nemens talks to Christian Kiefer about getting to the heart of Recession-era America in a baseball novel. | Lit Hub In Conversation
• Peter Biskind on an ode to Chinatown, Michael Dirda on a lost Claude McKay novel, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Aya de Leon on American Dirt, commercial fiction, and the war between genre and literature. | CrimeReads
• After meeting with a group of Latinx activists, Macmillan said it would take steps to “substantially increas[e] Latinx representation across Macmillan, including authors, titles, staff and its overall literary ecosystem.” | Los Angeles Times
• “What she is doing, her friend the novelist Adam Ross told me, is coming as close as anyone ever has to writing the very nature of being itself.” Parul Sehgal profiles Jenny Offill. | The New York Times Magazine
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon is using your Kindle to collect a lot of data about your reading habits. | The Guardian
• “I’m trying to remind myself, anytime I enter a space, that I’m supposed to be there.” Tomi Adeyemi, Akwaeke Emezi, Elizabeth Acevedo, Angie Thomas, and Nic Stone discuss the future of YA. | Elle
• How Charles Dickens came to be buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner—against his wishes. | Smithsonian Magazine
• Stephen King has quit Facebook, citing the “flood of false information allowed in its political advertising.” | The Guardian
• Jericho Brown talks growing up in the South, coming out, and wandering around in underwear at 4 in the morning, writing poetry. | Garden & Gun
• “After colors, after the shapes, and after the shadows, all that was left was contrast.” Marcelo Hernandez Castillo on temporary blindness at the US-Mexico border. | The Paris Review
• Relevant to your interests, literary types: the evolution of the “smart girl” trope in pop culture. | The A.V. Club
• The University of Saskatchewan has created an interactive app of The Canterbury Tales manuscript (with a little help from the late Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame). | Global News
• Jami Attenberg lived out all of our collective fantasies and spent the best $1,600 of her life on a custom bookshelf. | The Goods
• “Think about the worst thing you’ve ever lived through, and then imagine returning to it, diving into it again and again, over the course of years.” Ingrid Rojas Contreras on American Dirt and drilling into trauma for thrillers. | The Cut
• As a teenager, Charlotte Brontë wrote a book “the size of a matchbox” that will soon go on public display. | The Guardian
• Of course Dorothy Parker got fired from Vanity Fair for skewering the structures of the patriarchy (in a review of a Somerset Maugham play, no less). | Public Domain Review
• “One gift an artist might give to other artists is a demonstration of how to make work without shame.” Zadie Smith on Kara Walker. | NYRB

Also on Lit Hub:

Janine Barchas on Jane Austen, gritty educational reformer of the working class • The risk, and reward, of turning from memoir to fiction: Amy Jo Burns drives into the unknown • Can we know our own faces in a tech-dominated society? • Liesl Schillinger on the Founders inability to conceive of a president like Trump • Remembering legendary editor Alice Mayhew • When we call a book “cinematic,” what do we really mean? • On My Dark Vanessa and the way stories of trauma get told • Here are the top ten MFA archetypes to avoid (becoming) • What the great Russian writers didn’t understand about the criminal mind • How to write autofiction about your family without losing your mind • The delicate art of living alone • Melissa Mesku remembers Jade Sharma’s irreverence and audacity • Dahlia Lithwick and Moira Donegan on Brett Kavanaugh, “male law,” and what happens when women tell the truth • Googling literary lesbians: on Carson McCullers and the erotics of incompletion • Enjoy the 25 best bad Amazon reviews of The Talented Mr. Ripley • In repudiating the Lost Cause, was “The Burning” the hardest story for Eudora Welty to write? • How capitalism has distorted desire in the #MeToo era • What happens when you treat writing like acting? • Gish Jen talks to Mimi Lok about The Resisters, baseball, and taking risks • Ariana Neumann on finding traces of her Jewish family member’s life in Nazi-occupied Bohemia • What Lawrence of Arabia understood about the Middle East • How does focusing on the self affect a woman’s sex life? • A poem from Mark Bibbins’ collection 13th Balloon • Gabrielle Bellot on rereading Joan Didion in this hard American winter of 2020 • Richard Wagamese on anti-Native racism and deciding to fight back • Sophia Leonard details Truman Capote’s unfinished investigation on Russian socialites • Sam Wasson the early day of Los Angeles detective fiction • The 2020 Oscar nominations prove that Hollywood still hasn’t seen through the smoke

Best of Book Marks:

New on CrimeReads:

Olivia Rutligiano is on the trail of Hollywood’s most coveted prize—the stolen Oscar  • Wendy Heard celebrates a dazzling array of women-authored crime fiction coming out of Los Angeles in 2020 • In a city of the displaced, searching for crime fiction is an act of excavation: Peter Kimani on Nairobi noir • Film scholar Sam Wasson on the true crimes and Los Angeles detective fiction that inspired the making of Chinatown • Here are 9 crime and mystery novels you should read this February • Remembering the incalculable influence and resilient heroines of Mary Higgins Clark • Lee Goldberg on his quest to revive Ralph Dennis’s Hardman series • Kathy Peiss celebrates the quiet heroism of her uncle, a librarian turned WWII spy • Sophie Hannah on the creepiest families in fiction • Sarah Pinborough recommends ten books where setting is a character