Lit Hub Weekly: October 29 - November 2, 2018

• “I refuse to become an invisible woman, hiding away, like the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, in some underground refuge.” Gabrielle Bellot on empathy, desire, and resisting erasure as a trans woman. | NYRB
• A never-before-seen short story by Sylvia Plath will be published in January. | The Guardian
• “What writer doesn’t draw from their own lived experience?” Olivia Laing on autofiction, Chris Kraus, and the blurring of authorial boundaries. | Five Books
• Poet and playwright Ntozake Shange, author of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, has died at age 70. | The Root
• From Isle of Dogs to The Woman with the Five Elephants: On the representation of interpreters and literary translators in film. | Asymptote
• “Yelapa, Mexico—Sharks, scorpions, coconut grove—THUD THUD—three kids. Hurricane.” Read Lucia Berlin’s account of the pitfalls of her various dwellings. | The Paris Review
• Forget the book under the covers—these days, the kids are reading text message-based horror stories online. | WIRED
• So, a Russian scientist in Antarctica stabbed his colleague . . .  because he wouldn’t stop telling him the endings to books. | Mirror UK
• “Delight in what [you] fear” and more invaluable pieces of writing advice from Shirley Jackson. | Melville House
• “[Publishing] is basically like digging a hole in the ground and chucking money in.” Nevertheless! Independent publishers have more sway in the industry than ever. | WSJ Magazine
• “It’s very hard. It was like working with a ghost.” Merve Emre on the new adaptation of a sensational book—Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend—written by a famous enigma. | The New York Times
• Actually nice news: more than 200 people in Southampton formed a human chain to help a bookstore move its stock to a new shop down the street. | NPR
• Idra Novey on 10 imagined governments to distract us from our own. | BuzzFeed Reader
• “Beginning in his eighty-third year, he struck one more lode in the story of Donald Hall.” On the poet’s late work. | The New Yorker
• “Pregnancy and motherhood are experiences as individual as they are universal. We need books that reflect this”: on the exclusion of women of color from the “mom book” conversation. | The Cut
• “You can often hear me bitching about somebody’s performance, but I’m bitching on a terribly high level.” On Edward Gorey, ballet obsessive (and casual critic). | The Paris Review

Also on Lit Hub:

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE NEXT WEEK:  Aleksandar Hemon on the futility of debating fascism • Lewis Lapham on the “dysfunctional, stupefied plutocracy” that has risen to power• Precious Rasheeda Muhammad on the legacy of slavery borne by Black women • Jose Antonio Vargas on appearing on Fox News as an undocumented American • How gerrymandering is destroying American democracy • Elie Wiesel on the problem with tolerance • On Fiction/Non/Fiction Alexander Chee and Jane Coaston talk Midterms, storytelling, and the politics of Black conservatism • The final installments of our wildly hot-button series: 10 books that defined the aughts and the the 10 books that defined the 2010s • Sarah Rainsford follows the trail of Our Man in Havana to uncover some of Graham Greene’s Cuban haunts • César Aira on why art (and literature) needs more sarcastic critics • “I just wanna do hoodrat stuff with my friends.” Donald Quist on the Internet celebrity of Latarian Milton, and life for young black boys at a crossroads • Photojournalist Lynsey Addario’s letters home from Iraq • How much of “The Dead” is based on James Joyce’s own family? Colm Tóibín on the greatest short story ever written • The time James Salter inspired Hunter S. Thompson’s booze-soaked trip to the Kentucky Derby • Meg Wolitzer and Andre Dubus III discuss curiosity, empathy, and what it’s like to write a novel • On liars, fabulists, and make-believers: how literary hoax might be the most underappreciated genre • “The horror of the Great War consumed the lives of soldiers and civilians alike; it sought them out in their sleep, their imagination, and, bizarrely, in their entertainments.” How horror changed after WWI • “There is no tradition of horror or weird writing in Spanish.” Mariana Enriquez on religion, superstition, and the dark side of writing as an Argentinian • Mall zombies, property-holding vampires, and braaaaains (to each according to his need): horror in capitalism’s wake • The warming earth is waking up dormant—and deadly—diseases: Jeff Nesbit on the “warning flare” of animal die-offs • “I’m haunted by the desire to belong, that eternal wish of every immigrant displaced by choice or history.” Sandra Cisneros on Elena Poniatowska, in this edition of The Avid Reader • “One time, when he forgot to turn up to a tea party he wrote in his letter of apology that he couldn’t come because his thumbs were too small.” Viv Groskop on the weirdos of Russian lit, from Turgenev to Akhmatova • “They found Orwell dreadfully decayed but otherwise entirely himself.” On the last days of George Orwell • Five defunct literary magazines worth remembering • The Lit Hub Staff’s Favorite pieces from October, the best book covers of the month, and 16 books you should read in November

Best of Book Marks:

New on CrimeReads:

10 new crime novels to read this November • CrimeReads editor Dwyer Murphy rounds up the best conspiracy fiction “born of the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s,” from James Ellroy to Gary Phillips • Whatever happened to Barbara Newhall Follett, former child prodigy author who disappeared in 1939? Sarah Meuleman investigates •  “Minds did not imagine horrors but saw clearly the horribleness of their universe.” David Van Leer on the works of Edgar Allan Poe as psycho-thrillers • From Gustav Doré’s The Raven to Aubrey Beardsley’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, a look at the illustrated Edgar Allan Poe • “Horror can often be a very realistic way of expressing how the world feels.” Podcaster and novelist Joseph Fink talks horror, anxiety, and the road trip of life • Claire Fuller on voyeurism in crime fiction • Psychos, slashers, and serial killers: Film scholar Darryl Jones looks at the many modern visions of monstrosity • “How’s a killing like that arranged?” And other questions that Ian Fleming once asked Raymond Chandler • Anna Snoekstra recommends the best Aussie noir and true crime by women • Medicine is thrilling: a doctor’s guide to medical mysteries and thrillers, from Lydia Kang • Take a tour of the shadowy world of horror crime crossovers with weird fiction-aficionado Max Booth III • Paul French looks at the violent history, convulsive modern politics, and enviable setting of crime fiction in Barcelona • Steven Cooper on why investigative reporters turn to writing crime fiction • The worst Boston accents in crime cinema, the art of the painstaking Sherlock recreation, and more: the CrimeReads editors pick their favorite stories of the month