- From fellowship applications to “delinquent emails” to A Question of Silence: a week in the life of our Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. | The New York Times
- “We must now fight for the idea of Europe or see it perish beneath the waves of populism.” 30 writers, historians, and Nobel laureates have signed a manifesto urging Europeans to resist the onslaught of nationalism. | The Irish Times
- The magical night when Patti Smith read Virginia Woolf and covered U2. | Noisey
- The Man Booker prize has lost its “Man”—and is now looking to nail down a new sponsor. Any takers? | The Guardian
- “Do you have anyone in mind to play the lead?” Juliet Lapidos on our enduring cultural obsession with the “screen potential” of novels. | The New Yorker
- “I know lots of novelists. Novelists are very nice people. But I’m not a novelist. I’m a storyteller who sometimes writes novels.” Read an interview with Neil Gaiman. | Vanity Fair
- “The closer you interact with people who have more—and even much, much more—than you, the more you kind of feel like they’re mediocre.” What Kathy Wang’s novel Family Trust can teach us about tech culture. | Wired
- Iowa City, a mecca for writers, is becoming a preferred reading spot for Democratic presidential hopefuls. | Iowa City Press-Citizen
- “You can just cut out the thing that doesn’t work.” Read Jami Attenberg’s letter of recommendation for her hysterectomy. | The New York Times
- “Everything in Western thinking is so binary…I think a lot of African storytelling is just more nuanced, more sophisticated than that.” Hari Kunzru interviews Marlon James. | WSJ Magazine
- “I’m so burnt out.” How 10 women of color actually feel about working in the “very white, very privileged” publishing industry. | Bustle
- Books are not toasters, and other reasons why you shouldn’t be tagging authors in bad reviews of their work. | Slate
- Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker who has been detained on Manus Island for nearly six years, has just won Australia’s richest literary prize. He was not allowed to attend the ceremony. | The Guardian
- “By the middle of the book, Susanna is mostly dead.” Rivka Galchen on William Goldman’s “strange, sad, captivating” children’s book. | The New Yorker
Also on Lit Hub:
Gabrielle Bellot on W.B. Yeats, and the twin writerly virtues of arrogance and humility • The amount of unhappiness is extraordinary at the moment.” When the dismal science tries to study happiness • Recipes and wisdom from the late, great Ntozake Shange • Saleem Haddad on leaving London to live Fernando Pessoa’s dreamlife in Lisbon • On the life of Samuel Grynszpan and an act of resistance the Nazis used to justify Kristallnacht • On finding a way back to writing after years away • Moody moors, seaside cliffs, and a legacy of great writers-in-residence: a guide to literary Yorkshire • Can environmental activism succeed in China? • Brad Phillips on sex, drugs, and the empty spaces • What we can learn about happiness from women over 50 • In search of the surreal at the Leonora Carrington Museum • How we use stunning visuals to tell the stories of science • Sam Lipsyte talks to Annie DeWitt about cults, wellness, and cutting through the dumb noise • In honor of the Oxford English Dictionary’s birthday, a collection of cinematic dictionary title cards • On the life and times of Nahui Olin, poet, artist, and sex symbol of Mexico’s avant-garde • On the challenges of fictionalizing extremists • Designing characters’ homes as a writing technique • Twelve books we’re looking forward to in February • February’s edition of the Astrology Book Club, featuring long books for a short month, is as spookily accurate as ever • The Lit Hub staff’s favorite stories of the month, from Mary Oliver to W.B. Yeats to giddiness in art
Best of Book Marks:
Subscribe to the new Book Marks Bulletin for reviews, news, pre-publication giveaways, and more! • The first reviews of ever J. D. Salinger book, from The Catcher in the Rye to the posthumously-published Three Early Stories • All the Lives We Ever Lived author Katharine Smyth on five books about fathers, from James Salter’s Light Years to Hisham Matar’s The Return • This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Hope Wabuke on Alexandre Dumas, Kelly Sundberg, and Roxane Gay’s Twitter Feed • Sam Lipsyte’s Hark: gleaming satire OR unfocused indulgence? • African fantasy, movie sex, self-own feminism, and more in the 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • A dark satire of racism in America, an exploration of virtue and violence, and a Seoul-set fantastical crime novel all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
Lisa Levy gives us a close reading of “The Great Gatsby” as noir fiction • Gabino Iglesias investigates the massive popularity of American noir amongst French readers • In which our editor (and insufferable New Englander) Dwyer Murphy predicts the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl by reading a bunch of crime fiction from Boston and Los Angeles • Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch on the secret plot to assassinate George Washington • Even before TNT’s new miniseries, pop culture has long been obsessed with the case of the Black Dahlia • Tim Dorsey on the wild and wacky world of Florida crime fiction • Swindlers, psychopaths, and sociolinguistics: the CrimeReads editors’ favorite stories of January 2019 • Julia Ingalls on Smilla Jasperson, Lizbeth Salander, and other semi-feminist heroines of Scandinavian Noir • The CrimeReads editors round up all the crime and mystery you need to read this February • J. Kingston Pierce on painter Robert McGinnis, the “Rembrandt of pop art,” and his iconic cover designs • From The Age of Innocence to American Psycho, a literary tour through the anti-heroes of New York city
