LitHub Daily: April 28, 2015

TODAY: In 1953, Roberto Bolaño, the Tupac Shakur of novelists, was born.

Mark Ferguson, on being a debut novelist: “It is well documented that to publish a book (and especially a first novel) tends to make a person go temporarily insane.” | Literary Hub
Six PEN members, including Rachel Kushner, Teju Cole, and Francine Prose, are protesting PEN’s decision to present Charlie Hebdo with the Freedom of Expression Courage award by withdrawing from the event. | The New York Times
PEN has since issued a response; Salman Rushdie made his own rather charming statement, of sorts. | PEN America, The Guardian
Anthony Trollope is #trending, again. | The New Yorker
And will probably continue to do so, considering that he’s getting the Downton Abbey treatment. | BBC
“Does that make sense / Or should I describe it with my hands.” Poetry by Ben Lerner. | A Public Space
“The Archive” by Sebastià Jovani, broken down into data and represented as diagrams. | Granta
In less affirming literary data, poetry is officially dead. | The Washington Post
The MELCOM conference this year will focus on issues of preserving libraries and literary artifacts in war zones. | Publishing Perspectives
An “ingenious comedy of errors,” featuring Hitler as a time-traveler, has been translated into English for the first time. | The New York Times
Carmen Maria Machado re-purposes urban legends to present “heterosexual marriage as a horror story whose ending we all pretend we don’t know.” | The Los Angeles Review of Books

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