Lit Hub Weekly: March 4 - 8, 2019

• Margaret Kennedy’s grandchildren discovered a book of “literary confessions” with handwritten contributions from writers including Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay, and Rebecca West. | The Independent
• The Nobel Foundation and the Swedish Academy have announced that they will present two Nobel Prizes in Literature this year, to make up for last year, when they had to cancel the prize due to a sexual misconduct scandal. | Publishers Weekly
• In China, where web-based literature attracts 400 million readers, the government has tried steering the literary tastes of Internet users. | Abacus
• Perhaps you will not be shocked to learn that George Saunders is inspired by the Syracuse mall . . . where the carousel is right next to the Hooters. | Electric Literature
• Read a profile of A.N. Devers, who with the Second Shelf “has become the face of a movement to reevaluate and revalue rare books written by women.” | Vulture
• “It’s really very simple. Our stewardship would be both to the earth and to gender.” bell hooks, Roxane Gay, Maggie Nelson, and more on what a feminist future looks like. | Broadly
• In which we learn that Gary Shteyngart has maybe never seen a rabbit: the writer who collected 10-second drawings of bunnies from celebrated writers over the course of a decade. | The New York Times
• ”I thought it would be so fun, like someone on a game show, on a shopping spree. But it shook me.” Tayari Jones on what she bought with her Oprah’s Book Club money (and why she’s keeping her day job forever). | The Cut
• “On one page, the book baselessly claims that the United States government created AIDS, polio, Lyme disease […], and the Pixar movie Monsters Inc.” Amazon’s algorithm has pushed a Qanon conspiracy book up its charts. | NBC News
• “As it turns out, my mama had been donating plasma for much more than a day.” Read an excerpt from Mitchell S. Jackson’s Survival Math. | BuzzFeed News
• With Brexit still looming, readers in the UK are buying translated literature from other European countries at a record rate. | The Guardian
• Check out the 100 most widely stocked library books in the world. | OCLC
• Angela Flournoy, John Wray, Hanif Abdurraqib, Alexandra Kleeman, Lydia Kiesling and other writers on the music that matters right now. | The New York Times Magazine
• “Overall, I did not connect with this book.” MTV personality Farrah Abraham, Penthouse’s newest book critic (?), thinks Joan Didion is a “gin-drinking bore who writes convoluted books.” Ok! | Penthouse
• “He was looking for the pure poetry after all the things that usually tell us we are reading poetry are gone.” Matthew Zapruder on James Tate‘s “last, last poems.” | The Paris Review
• Dikda, a massive literary digitization project run by the Slovak National Library, has preserved more than 56 million pages of Slovakian literature. | Euronews

Also on Lit Hub:

Thomas McGuane on the beauty and absurdity of fly fishing • Helen Oyeyemi on K-dramas, Little Women, and (non)sense • Garth Greenwell on what it is to live the writer’s life • Peter Fleming on why he writes toward apocalypse • Our skeletons reveal more than we think • On the Spanish Civil War and Federico García Lorca’s last days • Craig Russell on seeing—and writing—the world with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome • On the obsessions of the literary biographer • Michael Moorcock on H.G. Wells, reluctant prophet • Who would win in a Great Literary Bake-off? • Etaf Rum on finding the courage to share her story • Kristen Arnett: It’s time we talk about librarians and money • On the vulnerability of home on an afflicted planet, from Calcutta to California • On Translating A Room of One’s Own into Romanian • Why it’s a mistake to define Virginia Woolf by her depression • Tabitha Prado-Richardson wonders, who needs astrology? • Louisa May Alcott’s (surprisingly practical) advice to a young writer • Remembering the birth of Gabo on the birthday of Gabriel García Márquez • 13 books to read this March • For your consideration: the 32 most iconic poems in the English language. (We await your poetic dissent.) • Salvatore Scibona and Victor LaValle in conversation • Susan Minot on (not) writing • An attempt to see Paris through the eyes of Georges Perec • Advice from Tony Hoagland on finding a poetic voice • On the archetypes of the captivity narrative • Reading Deborah Levy in the early months of motherhood • 50 one-star Amazon reviews of Wuthering Heights • On Luke Perry, Dylan McKay, and the myth of the bad boy • Digging into the queer subtext of My Fair Lady • Frederic Tuten on dreaming of Paris between the Bronx and Book Row • How the United States became a part of Latin America • Five Indonesian authors you should read. OR: Intan Paramaditha on the inescapable politics of lists • So you’ve come out to yourself as genderqueer—what’s next? • From Shakespeare to Tolkien, a survey of treasures from the New York Antiquarian Book Fair

Best of Book Marks:

New on CrimeReads:

Radha Vatsal asks, does it really matter who wrote Nancy Drew? • Lisa Levy on the trial of Lorena Bobbit and a revelatory new documentary on the case • A look at the crime fiction of New Orleans during Carnival and Mardi Gras •  Harriet Tyce rounds up 7 thrillers about lives spiraling out of control • Jason Pinter on an underappreciated classic of the new Golden Age of TV: The Shield • That time when Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway clashed on the set of “Our Man in Havana.” • Happy birthday, Mickey Spillane! Looking back at the best and most outrageous cover designs from a half-century of Mike Hammer • William Boyle curates a hypothetical film festival of screwball noir • Greg Iles on small-town survival, corruption, and the Mississippi River • Elaine Shannon on Paul le Roux, criminal mastermind of the startup era • Lisa Levy rounds up the very best psychological thrillers coming out this month • Annie Ward on the role of writing in healing from a near-death experience • Craig Russell looks at the most iconic settings in gothic fiction • Bill Loehfelm on writing a Mardi Gras book without the clichés • Peter Swanson looks at 10 thrillers that delve into mental health