Literary Hub

TODAY: In 1783, Washington Irving, best known for his short stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” is born.

“Recognizing that Elena Ferrante is most probably a man could also change things for the worse.” Elisa Sotgiu on reading gender and class in one of the great literary mysteries of our time. | Lit Hub
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Jonathan Meiburg on the falcon that defied nearly all of falconry’s conventions: Tina the striated caracara. | Lit Hub Nature
“The fear of leaving my mother behind, as I board a train going somewhere she’s never been, will probably never go.” Jennifer De Leon on writing as a bridge between mothers and daughters. | Lit Hub Memoir
Kazuo Ishguro’s Klara and the Sun, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed, and Melissa Febos’ Girlhood all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. | Book Marks
Travel around the world in the roaring 20s with these historical mysteries, recommended by Erica Ruth Neubauer. | CrimeReads
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A.E. Osworth talks to the editors of the poetry anthology We Want It All about trans poetics, collectivity, and writing about the self. | Guernica
“America has ruined the name Bich for me, and I have let it.” Beth Nguyen on anti-Asian racism, violence, and the space afforded by choosing a new name. | The New Yorker
How Kitchen Table Press—founded by Black women in 1981 and committed to “only publish[ing] women of color with good (intentioned) hearts and strong minds”—changed the industry. | JSTOR Daily
“How do you maintain a sane interaction and communication with that unseen person without sort of excommunicating them from humanity in some way?” Helen Oyeyemi talks about her writing career, the power of folk tales, and her creative process. | Vulture
“What can we imagine and what can we do together? We have to collectively imagine.” Mariame Kaba on abolition and collaboration. | The Nation
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“What would it mean to make caring for others into an explicitly public priority?” Reading Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through amid a national mental health crisis. | Public Books
UCLA’s Archive of Healing, “one of the most comprehensive databases of medicinal folklore in the world,” is now digitally accessible. | Hyperallergic
“I didn’t understand any of that at all, and it’s fascinating how much it really worked as hearsay and gossip.” Jennifer Keishin Armstrong on the history of women in television and the impact of McCarthyism. | Bitch Media
“I love history, particularly the stories that get left out of overarching narratives because they are deemed too niche, strange, uncomfortable or hard to understand.” Kaitlyn Greenidge on her writing process. | Shelf Awareness
“Besides buoyancy, the opposite of buoyancy drives my work a lot. It’s rage.” Sally Wen Mao dissects the relationship between language and power. | The Creative Independent
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A leaked internal document reveals that Amazon’s Twitter “ambassadors” were chosen based on their “great sense[s] of humor,” and “includes examples of how its ambassadors can snarkily respond to criticisms of the company and its CEO.” LOL. | The Intercept
“He was very obsessively devoted to promoting his own interests. I can live with that. That’s a very human quality.” Blake Bailey discusses his new biography of Philip Roth. | Los Angeles Times
“Whether or not I wanted to, I began to see myself in my history, through the lens of my obsessions.” Hanif Abdurraqib on his latest book, social media, and vulnerability. | Shondaland
“How much should we care about the identity of a translator?” Tim Parks on a changing vocation. | New York Review of Books
“The tragedy in Baartman’s story makes people slow to recognize her as a body-positive heroine.” Shayla Lawson on body image and Saartjie Baartman. | Bustle
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“Often, when you’re writing novels, you’re not only writing toward things. You’re also pushing against them as you’re working.” Lauren Groff on religion, individualism, and writing her new book. | ELLE

Also on Lit Hub:

On Walt Whitman’s time working in the thick of the Civil War • Tiya Miles on the fearless truthtelling of Harriet Ann Jacobs • Edward Hirsch gives a close reading of Robert Hayden’s poem, “The Whipping” • Timothy Brennan pays tribute to Edward Said • Emily Raboteau and Emily Schiffer capture mothering small children in a pandemic • Georgette Moger finds solace as a young widow in Paris • Dawnie Walton searches for herself in rock and roll • An economist explains the winner-take-all-approach to book publishing • Melissa Febos on the linguistic trajectory of the world “slut” • Ilona Bannister asks, where’s the “room of one’s own” for moms? • Andri Snær Magnason navigates a sacred Icelandic text • How the West Village transformed Eleanor Roosevelt • Marcos Gonsalez on what it means to choose whiteness • On the task of uncovering Rwanda’s modern history • A few savage burns from (and about) literary icons • What can dogs teach us about alien intelligence? • The prophetic visions and unflinching will of Harriet Tubman • Writing a novel in 30 days, in prison, during a pandemic • In praise of the detective novel • Seven memoirs that ignore the limits of linearity • Why Orville Schell made The Big Switch from nonfiction to fiction… in his eighties • Marcia Butler recommends six books that taught her unexpected craft lessons • Nancy Johnson on the writing techniques she learned as a TV reporter • On the unsung Larry Doby and what baseball owes Jackie Robinson • Inside the long friendship of James Merrill and Elizabeth Bishop • Jackie Polzin on the joys of slow correspondence • On Merry Levov, American literary fiction’s peerless female stutterer • Brandy Schillace on the first successful organ transplant

Best of Book Marks:

The Bell Jar, The Argonauts, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and more rapid-fire book recs from Gabriela Garcia • A month of literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of March • New titles from Jeff VanderMeer, Martha Wells, Helen Oyeyemi, and more of April’s best Sci-Fi and Fantasy books • Olivia Laing on Rachel Kushner’s The Hard Crowd, Sophie Gilbert on Melissa Febos’ Girlhood, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week • Kaitlyn Greenidge’s Libertie, Sharon Stone’s The Beauty of Living Twice, and Melissa Febos’ Girlhood all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week