- “Newfound interest in Native writers—who speak with the authority of a people who lived through genocide and survived to talk about it—makes sense.” On Tommy Orange and the new “Native Renaissance.” | The Paris Review
- In a bid to create the most-anticipated literary adaptation of all time, Greta Gerwig is in talks to direct a version of Little Women starring Saoirse Ronan, Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, Florence Pugh, and Timothée Chalamet. | Vulture
- Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Marlon James, and more on what it’s like to win the Man Booker prize (good, we would imagine). | The Guardian
- Is it shelter or is it nightmare? Gaiutra Bahadur on immigration, memory, and mapping. | xpmethod
- “I just want to see the edge of the building, and then I want to go build it myself.” Ariel Levy profiles Ottessa Moshfegh. | The New Yorker
- After allegations of sexual assault led to the cancellation of the 2018 Nobel Prize, the New Academy—a group of over 100 Swedish cultural figures—plans to award an alternative Nobel prize in literature. | The Guardian
- “Most nights before I fall asleep, and sometimes during a quiet moment in the day, I can feel a knife floating above my right shoulder.” Read an excerpt from Ashleigh Young’s Can You Tolerate This? | The Cut
- Janet Malcolm claims her place “in the annals of horsing around” by admitting that in her book on photography she successfully passed off a snapshot by her husband Gardner Botsford as a professional work of art. | The New York Review of Books
- “His words bring into focus the cruel irony of what it feels like to be a young black man in America.” On a poem by 17-year-old Antwon Rose, who was killed by a police officer in Pittsburgh while fleeing a traffic stop, unarmed, in June. | The New Yorker
- Why are so many children’s books about mice? The answer to a question you didn’t even know you had. | Bustle
- No one ever called her a warm and fuzzy writer: On “Rogue’s Gallery,” Mary McCarthy’s “sly rewriting of The Great Gatsby.” | Public Books
- “His poetry offers a model of artistic and political opposition that equips people with more than stress and anxiety.” Translating the radical poetry of Aimé Césaire. | The Nation
- Writing about other people, building a career, and making mistakes: collected wisdom from the “nonfiction mafia of women.” | Electric Literature
- “It is a feminist act to preserve stuff that women have done and written.” On the growing role of women in the traditionally male-dominated rare book field. | The Paris Review
- Speaking of rare books: “‘While I breathe, I hope.’ This ‘cryptic message’ discovered in a copy of The Faerie Queene reveals it to be one of the books Charles I read during his final imprisonment.” | The Guardian
- As you listen to Rita Moreno read Emma Lazarus’s famous poem, think on these words from Statue of Liberty protester Therese Patricia Okoumou: “In America, we do not put children in cages.” | Vulture, The Cut
Also on Lit Hub:
Inside the billion-dollar business of detaining immigrants: Eileen Truax at the Eloy Detention Center • Trespassing at Ernest Hemingway’s last home in Ketchum, Idaho • Holden Caulfield: Good or Bad? On literature’s great disgruntled teen • Francine Prose: It’s much harder than it looks to write clearly. Here’s how • 9 Great American Novels by authors not born in America • On the origins of the weird and wild traditions of American roadside attractions • What can we learn from the campus radicals of 1968? (Hint: not civility) • At this point, shouldn’t most fiction be climate-fiction? Nine important cli-fi novels you should read • Christian Donlan on a lifetime reading Oliver Sacks, and how it helped him understand his diagnosis • Letting kids be kids: on summer camp, Elizabeth Bishop, and the poetry of youth • 16 highbrow beach reads for your summer getaway—or day at the beach, or afternoon in the air conditioned café… • Peter Mayle, iconic Englishman of Provence, really knew how to the handle the trolls (back when the trolls wrote letters)
Best of Book Marks:
To mark the anniversary of his death, we look back at the first reviews of every Ernest Hemingway novel • The author of The Last Cruise Kate Christensen spoke to Jane Ciabattari about her 5 favorite accounts of gnarly, treacherous, inspiring, and dramatic sea voyages • This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: author and critic Priscilla Gilman on Virginia Woolf, Daphne Du Maurier, and criticism as a calling • Alexandra Kleeman on Ottessa Moshfegh, Roxane Gay on To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Smiley on Edmund White, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Nightmare cabins, modernist painters, magical dieselpunk sci-fi, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
11 must-read mysteries coming out this July, including new books from Megan Abbott and Lori Roy • 21 crime novels set during revolutions, rebellions, and coups, because it’s that time of year • Matthew Iden on the work of 8 crime authors who served time in prison, from Chester Himes to E. Richard Johnson to Anne Perry • Paul French looks at the criminal demimonde of Shanghai in the 1930s • Riley Sager on the childhood disappearance that’s always haunted him, and the mysterious menace of summer retreats • “Unpacking the reasons why a mother kills her children can scare people”: Nancy Rommelmann on the crimes of Amanda Stott-Smith • James Hankins on 10 classic thrillers and crime novels where family life takes center stage, and blood ties are everything • Cristina Alger looks at 7 badass heroines helping to redefine the modern thriller • Amy Stuart recommends 10 crime novels to keep you up all night reading
