Lit Hub Weekly: October 4 – 8, 2021

• “Poetry might seem like an inconsequential side-casualty in a larger, noisier war, but in fact it is central to the story of ownership of ideas and expressions.” Sam Riviere in defense of poetic plagiarism. | Lit Hub Poetry

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• Larry Lockridge reveals the story behind The Snake Pit, Mary Jane Ward’s dark comic masterpiece. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Clocking in, chanting, and selling out subjects: Sara Davidson on the ten writing lessons she learned from hanging out with Joan Didion. | Lit Hub Craft

• You know it when you see it: the 25 most iconic book covers in history. | Lit Hub

• New titles from Jonathan Franzen, Miriam Toews, Val McDermid, and David Sedaris all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• “How did stories make it more likely we would be alive tomorrow?” Lee Child on the invention of fiction. | CrimeReads

• How has the pandemic changed what we normally think of as “science writing”? Ed Yong offers some reflections. | The Atlantic

• Hilton Als discusses the role that art can play in rebuilding our fractured culture. | Interview

• Bad art friends: Robert Kolker tells the story of inspiration, appropriation, and litigation between two writers. | New York Times Magazine

• Jonathan Franzen on his most memorable reads. | Elle

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• “All narratives suddenly ceased. It was just the virus now.” Amitava Kumar talks to Ryan Chapman about responding to the “infodemic” around COVID-19 in his new novel. | BOMB

• “I often find myself sitting down to write and then my ghosts arrive.” Ada Limón discusses writing through grief. | NER

• Welcome to Pillow-Cat Books, “the first animal-focused bookshop in New York.” | The New York Times

• Read a breakdown of the effect of supply-chain snarls on the publishing industry (and get your holiday book pre-orders in now). | Vox

• How Indigenous folklore helped geoscientists understand the story of three giant, out-of-place boulders off the coast of the Makin Islands. | Hakai Magazine

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• “If someone wanted to build a young woman specifically for the purpose of being hated by the internet, she was what they would’ve wrought.” Scaachi Koul considers the legacy of Marie Calloway. | Buzzfeed News

• On the connection between baking and the labor of publishing a book. | Catapult

• Looking back at a 1950s newsletter dedicated to gay literature, which amassed a mailing list in the thousands despite threats from the FBI. | The New Yorker

• Are coffee table books worth it? Design pros weigh in. | The Wall Street Journal

• “You have a right to walk out that door. I have an obligation to say what I believe. This is how we get along.” A conversation with Nikki Giovanni. | Public Books

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• Read a roundtable of authors with roots in Latin America on identity, the publishing world, and their new work. | Teen Vogue

Also on Lit Hub:

Dave Eggers talks about escaping corporate tech • Miriam Toews on Grapes of Wrath and writing honestly • Amitava Kumar asks, can fiction fight fake news? • Bonnie Friedman reflects on writerly self-doubt • Joshua Ferris on his writing habits and Sesame Street • Kelefa Sanneh traces country music’s evolution from twangy regional phenomenon to Lil Nas X • On questions of procreation and responsibility in post-apocalypse narratives • Colin Kaepernick on abolition and Black liberation • Nadia Wassef reflects on owning the first modern Egyptian bookstore of its kind • How Babar represents the troubling history of colonialism in France • On Constancia de la Mora and the plight of writers in exile • Jocelyn Nicole Johnson on the uses of “vengeful fiction” • How to write a good fight scene • Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen on recording her family’s Farose stories • Patrick Allington reads the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena report alongside Chariot of the Gods? • How fanfiction can inspire meaningful social change • Stephanie Grant unpacks the uses and abuses of disgust • How to be married in 16 simple (and excruciating) steps • Why Kendrick Lamar “wears the mantle of Tupac Shakur” • How Ralph Waldo Emerson helped transform the word “landscape” • Rowan Jacobsen on the primordial pull of the truffle • Why it took scientists so many centuries to grasp genetics • A brief survey of men having opinions about what women are reading • “Queer Love, it turns out, is everything True Love wishes it could be” • What Squirrel Hill can teach us about the power of proximity • Wisława Szymborska recommends learning to write from life