LitHub Daily: April 15, 2016

TODAY: In 1802, William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a “long belt” of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. 

• Feeling “ugly lonely”: a short story by the late Alan Cheuse, “The Burden.” | Literary Hub
• In search of the darkest cult in American history: Laura Elizabeth Woollett on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. | Literary Hub
• Yahdon Israel talks to fashion designer Charles Harbison on the books that influence him. | Literary Hub
• The shortlist for the Man Booker International Prize has been announced. | The Man Booker Prize
• “It draws the obsessive and brooding. It is perhaps the most isolating of games.” John Jeremiah Sullivan on David Foster Wallace’s love of tennis. | The New Yorker
• What is language meant to do? Lynn Steger Strong on Virginia Woolf, reader-based prose, and learning to be a writer. | Catapult
• “It’s our job, as awake humans, not just as writers, to consider things. Ugly, uncomfortable things and beautiful, terrifying things.” Amelia Gray interviews Catherine Lacey. | The Tower
• Jung Yun on cluelessness, forced narrative breaks, and almost becoming a Tiffany. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “I crept back and forth on all fours across the overpass of Styx.” Ken Chen on visiting his father in the underworld. | Harriet
• “I met an oil man in Marfa and we talked about this a little bit, and he explained it was the family business. That’s all. Owning the earth, I guess.” Stephanie La Cava talks to Flavin Judd and Eileen Myles about the West Texas Trans-Pecos pipeline. | The Believer Logger
• “As a writer I’m interested in the aftermath of things—the events that happen after someone has already decided. That is more complicated, and more interesting to me.” An interview with debut novelist Brit Bennett. | Jezebel

Also on Literary Hub: Sallie Tisdale looks to Socrates and Hannah Arendt in order to see herself  · Ijeoma Oluo on how Teju Cole helped her make peace with the Nigerian scam artist · Disaster strikes: from Kim Brooks’s The Houseguest

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