- “Everything’s totally unacceptable and it’s outrageous and it’s not okay.” Scenes from the March for Our Lives in New York City and Washington D.C. | New York Review of Books
- Some addicts get pitied, others get blamed: Leslie Jamison on Blueschild Baby, a forgotten novel by George Cain that belongs in the addiction canon—and why it hasn’t found a place there. | The New Yorker
- “Berlin Alexanderplatz is less a book than a living thing.” On the historic, joyful new translation of Alfred Döblin’s modernist masterpiece. | The Baffler
- “I brought bins full of my husband’s manuscripts, and I started sorting: looking for what I could salvage, comparing drafts, and editing what I could.” Emily Doak on shepherding her husband’s posthumous novel into print. | Electric Literature
- “Advice givers, at their best, can attempt to fold together the micro and macro—helping readers pay meaningful attention to other people, and distilling issues that can seem abstract.” On the enduring cultural influence of the advice columnist. | The New Republic
- “A profound nervousness runs throughout his oeuvre, a suspicion that fiction-writing is infected with the original sin of fabulation.” On Ian McEwan’s staid rationalism and the (im)possibility of an atheist novel. | The Point
- Ursula K. Le Guin once recorded an electronica album—and yes, it’s good. | The Guardian
- Why libraries around the country have started giving away free pouches of seeds. | Atlas Obscura
- “There are no strong, silent men to set the moral universe in order. There are only girls who survive the cruelty enacted on them by men, and girls who die.” How Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s thrillers investigate misogyny. | The Walrus
- Eve Ewing, Solmaz Sharif, Danez Smith, and more: 100 essential poets for your “survival pack.” | Autostraddle
- “The conundrum of who women dress for, the unspoken question of why we mind about our clothes . . . has never gone away.” Rosemary Hill on Virginia Woolf’s notion of “frock consciousness” and the role of clothing in fiction. | London Review of Books
- How the insanity defense that saved Ezra Pound from a treason conviction for collaborating with Mussolini’s regime “has created permanent difficulties for assessing his literary achievement and, for that matter, reckoning with his politics.” | The Nation
- On Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair, John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies, and Tim Murphy’s Christodora—three novels that “connect recent queer history with contemporary gay life.” | Longreads
- “They wanted to rob us of knowledge.” Rebuilding literary culture in Mosul, 8 months after the end of the ISIS occupation. | New York Review of Books
- “I didn’t really realize that I wrote about food so much until other people started mentioning it.” Elaine Castillo on cuisine as culture, canned food, and colonialism in the Philippines. | Taste
Also on Lit Hub:
Neil Gaiman and N.K. Jemisin talk comics, adapting the page to the screen, and writing queer characters • Masha Gessen on the lives lived inside the gulags of the Soviet Union • Kristin Chen on the difficulty of writing across two cultures, when neither feel entirely like home • Letter to an emerging Indigenous writer, from Daniel Heath Justice • The world’s tiniest publishing house: a public typewriter in the middle of a bookstore • Poet Wendy Xu: “It’s impossible to put into words the complexity of immigrant love” • Women writing the west: six works of nonfiction you should read • Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: In the endless sameness of prison, writing kept me human • Essential writing advice from Virginia Woolf • How should a literary adaptation be? We asked the critics for an answer • Regarding the pain of women: why American medicine needs a more nuanced approach to chronic pain • From Helen Keller to Jonah Lehrer, a dozen literary plagiarism scandals, ranked for your ease of use • When three generations of DC powerbrokers met on the eve of Obama’s presidency • An agent’s lament: My year in Donald Trump-themed novel queries • Why the world’s cities are teeming with exotic wildlife more than ever • Lit Hub staff picks: our favorite stories of the month
Best of Book Marks:
To Say Goodbye is to Die a Little: a look back at Raymond Chandler’s autobiographical opus, The Long Goodbye • 5 Books Making News This Week: Gunrunners, Ghosts, and Family Gatherings •This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Mark Athitakis on Jane Smiley, Class, and the literature of the Midwest • “…it’s physically impossible to dunk on a novel that is already dunking on itself so hard”: HuffPost’s takedown of Sean Penn’s debut novel, and more Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Alcoholism, obsession, the Hollywood boys club, and more all feature among our Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
49 beautiful, bizarre covers of “The Long Goodbye” on the anniversary of Raymond Chandler’s death • Erica Wright on the poetry of restraint and very small crime scenes • As the mystery world mourns Philip Kerr, Otto Penzler reflects on the man and his legacy • “Whose work can stand up to that sort of comparison?” Paul Vidich on writing in the shadow of Graham Greene • A former crime reporter weighs in on what life is really like on the crime beat • On the iconic Civil Rights photographer turned FBI informant • Take a sordid literary tour of gilded era New York City with Simon Baatz • What to watch this weekend: 12 crime shows premiering (and returning) to TV this month • 9 of British television’s most powerful women detectives
