- 52 postcards from America: Camille T. Dungy, Alexander Chee, and other writers and public figures on the issues capturing the attention of their communities. | Pacific Standard
- “I never know why certain images, preserved by memory, are still so fertile. I’m not sure why they evoke the stories that they do.” A profile of Mario Vargas Llosa. | Words Without Borders
- “Five years ago, people would have asked, ‘Why are you publishing these books? No one is interested.’” On the recent success of feminist presses. | Publishers Weekly
- It left readers swooning, drowning in the riptide of her language: Jill Lepore on Rachel Carson, poet of the sea. | The New Yorker
- The myth of exceptionalism, gender asymmetries, and the big-tent quality of communal recovery: Chris Kraus interviews Leslie Jamison about her new book The Recovering. | The Paris Review
- “When our workaday vocabulary fails to represent awe and reverence and glory, only a dirty word will suffice.” On the history of profanity in poetry. | Poetry Foundation
- “All our worst mistakes begin as fiction in our lives.” Yiyun Li and Andrés Barba in conversation. | BOMB
- From I Want My Hat Back to What Pete Ate from A-Z, the best, least annoying books to read to children. | Shondaland
- “It was that book that taught me gender equality wasn’t just about society—it was about me, personally. It taught me that the patriarchy begins at home.” Tayari Jones on learning the lessons of Song of Solomon. | The Atlantic
- The world isn’t completely terrible: Before his death, Bill Cunningham secretly wrote a memoir, and we’re all going to get to read it. | New York Times
- From poetry by Hieu Minh Nguyen to a newly translated Clarice Lispector novel, artist Sam McKinniss illustrates the 76th page of books forthcoming this season. | T Magazine
- The nostalgia boom is coming for our cookbooks: reissues of classics like The Graham Kerr Cookbook, as well as several contemporary studies of vintage recipes, will hit shelves this spring. | Publishers Weekly
- “I had to say to myself, ‘I haven’t written enough about blackness, yet it’s part of my consciousness and my lived experience.’” Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith talks the process behind her new book, Wade in the Water. | Vogue
- “When I’m looking for myself, I find myself in the pages of Baldwin.” Jacqueline Woodson profiles Lena Waithe. | Vanity Fair
- “The only time of year when I felt the richness of the world they described, the Iran of the ‘70s and before, was during New Year.” Porochista Khakpour on celebrating Nowruz. | Serious Eats
Also on Lit Hub:
Does The Virgin Suicideshold up 25 years later? • On the agony and ecstasy of taking author photos (mainly the agony) • Jay Parini on the time he had a beer with Jorge Luis Borges in a Scottish pub and asked him, innocently: “Have you ever written a novel?” • Imagining Iraq: On the 15th anniversary of the Iraq War, Philip Metres offers a brief history of imperial dementia • John Edgar Wideman meditates on vulnerability, the abyss, and going to the doctor • What exactly does a librarian do? (Everything.) A new column from Kristen Arnett • Why do we turn to stories in the midst of disaster? Madeleine Wattenberger in Mexico City, post-earthquake • Shannon Leone Fowler talks to her mother, Karen Joy Fowler, about writing a grief memoir • Stop looking for one war story to make sense of all wars: Matt Young on the romanticized image of the warrior poet • If you have any money left over from the Sylvia Plath auction earlier this week, here are 25 of the most expensive books on the Internet • Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and the momentous summer of 1962 • If it only takes seconds to hack an ATM… How long for a self-driving car? • Writers and their mothers: how Louisa May Alcott’s mom encouraged her early writing
The Best of Book Marks:
The Dirtiest Book Ever Published?: a look back at five of the earliest reviews of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint • The NBCC Award-winners, Julián Herbert’s Tomb Song, Bruce Holbert’s Whiskey, and more Books Making News This Week • Paul Constant of the Seattle Review of Books on The Scarlet Letter, unthinking boosterism in reviewing, and reading fiction in the age of trump in this week’s Secrets of the Book Critics • Carmen Maria Machado on internalized misogyny, Rumaan Alam on Uzodinma Iweala’s hybrid novel, Luis Alberto Urrea’s radical act of love, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Adulterers, Agatha Christie, rebel ladies, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
Whatever your taste in crime, your perfect podcast is waiting for you, right now: The essential crime podcasts of spring 2018 • We attract the strange and bring out the crazy: A guide to Florida crime fiction • Whether a woman can have children without losing her creative self is a subject that refuses to die: Natasha Bell on “the systemic sexism at the heart of both parenthood and the arts” • From Agatha Christie to Tana French, 7 of mystery’s most menacing manor houses • Defy the rational with these 10 tales of gaslit crime, apparitions, and 19th century detectives • Glasgow: city of razor gangs, modernist novels, punk music, substance abuse and high culture • Alex Berenson on cyber-espionage and Russian hackers • Underground numbers games, the CIA, and the birth of the Cuban Mob
