- “Dystopia used to be a fiction of resistance; it’s become a fiction of submission.” Jill Lepore on the uninspiring politics of contemporary dystopic literature. | The New Yorker
- “You can’t possibly think that a human feeling is anything more than information, electrical currents, controllable under the correct circumstances.” An excerpt from Catherine Lacey’s forthcoming novel The Answers. | VICE
- On the possible abolishment of the NEA and NEH, and the American “antipathy to state-funded art.” | The New Republic
- Two scholars have discovered an unseen Edith Wharton play entitled Shadow of a Doubt, written nearly two decades prior to The Age of Innocence. | The Guardian
- “No real person will ever match the image that I or a reader have in our minds.” Elena Ferrante weighs in on the My Brilliant Friend TV adaptation. | The New York Times
- Words Without Borders has launched a new education program, WWB Campus, that seeks to “connect students and educators to eye-opening contemporary literature from across the globe.” | Words Without Borders
- When no one is climaxing, will we keep reading? A brief history of sex in American fiction. | Bookforum
- Books were either decent or indecent, vulgar or civilized, responsible or irresponsible: Vivian Gornick on “deliciously feared” midcentury literary critic, Diana Trilling. | The Nation
- Do read your work out loud; don’t write within arm’s length of a thesaurus: John Grisham’s advice for writing popular fiction. | The New York Times
- “I know they are asking after their friend, the one I helped kill.” An excerpt from Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. | Oxford American
- Meet Tunglið, the small Icelandic press that prints its books in batches of 69 on the night of a full moon—and burns every unsold copy. | The Guardian
- “The way some people see themselves reflected in hip-hop, I saw myself in urban fiction.” An interview with Noëlle Santos, the woman working to open what would be the Bronx’s only bookstore. | Broadly
- The Center for Fiction has announced its 2017 class of Emerging Writer Fellows. | The Center for Fiction
- “One of the strangest things about drawing and writing is that what you’ve written and drawn becomes more real to you than what you actually experienced.” An interview with Kristen Radtke. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- James Patterson has increased the “holiday bonuses” he distributes to individual booksellers in partnership with the American Booksellers Association by $100,000. | Publishers Weekly
Also on Lit Hub:
Rebecca Solnit on the corrosive privilege of Donald Trump, the most mocked man in the world · Sherman Alexie on catharsis, PTSD, and being unable to forgive his mother· Sex, memoir, and the women of the beat generation: On Diane di Prima’s Memoirs of a Beatnik · On the queer literary origins of Wonder Woman · Chris Kraus on why you should read Eileen Myles’s first novel, Cool for You· My fictional nemesis: Why Thomas Hardy’s Angel Clare is the worst · Why are we so afraid of female desire? On sex and moral panic, from the Victorians to the Hays Code · On the emotional resonance of the diaries of Franz Kafka, the ultimate self-doubting writer · Samantha Irby needs to talk about some shit· What abolishing the NEA will mean for women artists
Best of Book Marks:
In the wake of his death, we look back on Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and Train Dreams · The sneak attacks of wisdom and poignancy in David Sedaris’ diaries · A 1971 New York Times review of The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor · “Just about perfect”: Eudora Welty on Charlotte’s Web · “The rareness and difficulty of love” in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room · Arundhati Roy, Otis Redding, Aliens, Al Franken, and more all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
