TODAY: In 1984, novelist, poet, and short story writer Richard Brautigan dies.
- The National Book Awards longlists for young people’s literature, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction were announced. | The New Yorker
- “That was John’s great subject. Everything. Subjectivity itself.” Eileen Myles on John Ashbery. | OUT
- “I think that ghosts are embodiments of the past. Especially here in the South because we’re so close to the past.” An interview with Jesmyn Ward. | The Millions
- “To point out that there are continuities is not to deny that there are new and novel aspects to this present terror.” Junot Díaz on Trump, immigration, and community. | On Being
- “It was hard to tell what Cubans thought about a dead white American being promoted as one of their country’s icons.” How Havana sells Hemingway as a tourist attraction. | VICE
- On Windham-Campbell prizewinning poet Ali Cobby Eckermann, who was taken at birth from her Aboriginal family as part of Australia’s “stolen generation.” | The New York Times
- “African writers are rarely thought to speak to the universal—in the philosophical sense rather than the platitudinous one.” On Kintu and our preconceptions about the African novel. | The New York Review of Books
- “It is rumored gods grow / where the blood of a hanged man drips.” A poem by Nicole Sealey. | The New York Times Magazine
- “I am not always sure if I wrote it or just tried to avoid writing it and failed.” An interview with Impossible Views of the World author Lucy Ives. | Bookforum
- “While the terms identity politics and intersectionality have taken hold of our discourse, the substance of these theories has been left behind.” Mychal Denzel Smith on what liberals misunderstand about identity politics. | The New Republic
- The distance between curiosity and fear is tragically short: Hanif Abdurraqib on the Muslim-American experience after 9/11. | BuzzFeed Reader
- “She will perhaps acknowledge here because it’s the end of the story, that this is her entire goal as a fiction writer: to show how often people try and fail to love one another.” Lynn Steger Strong on the story she’ll never write. | Catapult
This week on Lit Hub:
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Announcing the 2017 Man Booker shortlist · When Roald Dahl’s editor decided he was too much of a prick to publish · The classes 25 famous writers teach· On Patience Gray’s Honey Fom a Weed, a little known, much loved cookbook that was ahead of its time · When your favorite writer does not like your initial cover designs · “I’ve always been political”: Celeste Ng and Nicole Chung in conversation · 7 writers who were also editors (and the books they edited) · The divinity of dog writing, from Virginia Woolf to Eileen Myles · On Marilynne Robinson and finding comfort in domestic rituals· How should a male writer be? On the toxic competitiveness of writers · The ways in which a novel can fail like a marriage· We’re drifting toward monopoly, conformism, and machines: How technology makes us less free
The best of Book Marks:
Fierce cruelty and redeeming love: A 2003 review of Khaled Housseini’s The Kite Runner · Danielle Allen’s Cuz and the tradition of moral reckoning in black American nonfiction · From 1986, Stephen King’s It and the evil that haunts America · Erica Jong on Roald Dahl’s macabre children’s classic, The Witches · NPR calls Tales of Two Americas “a gripping triptych of American displacement and transience” · Life is heartbreak: Joyce Carol Oates on Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love · Dorothy Parker called J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man “a rigadoon of rascality, a bawled-out comic song of sex” · Celeste Ng, John McPhee, Nicole Krauss, and more: the best-reviewed books of the week
