LitHub Daily: April 29, 2016

TODAY: In 1875, Henry James’s collection of travel pieces, Transatlantic Sketches, is published. 

• Remembering Jenny Diski: from Michelle Dean, Joanna Walsh, Charlotte Shane, Haley Mlotek, Rumaan Alam and more. | Literary Hub
• 16 books Lit Hub is looking forward to in May. | Literary Hub
• Women detectives in fact and fiction: on the first female sleuth and the evolution of detective fiction. | Literary Hub
• Infiltrating literature’s secret societies: Tobias Carroll on our fascination with all-powerful, unseen institutions. | Literary Hub
• Why are there so many novels about famous writers? | Literary Hub
• “When I’m at work, it’s strictly sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph.” An interview with Don DeLillo and excerpt from Zero K. | The Wall Street Journal
• On the re-released works of George Plimpton, pioneering participatory journalist and encourager of unlikely friendships. | Vanity Fair
• #BlackNarrativesMatter: John Keene on the importance of translating non-Anglophone black diasporic authors. | Harriet
• “The thing that makes me happiest is a lot of people have told me my writing has given them permission to do or feel different things.” Discussing theory with Maggie Nelson, featuring illustrations by Harry Dodge. | The Lifted Brow
• Ruth, Pete, Bobby, Charlotte, and Pearl: Using recent analysis, Ed Park has written an MFA-approved short story. | The Atlantic, The New Yorker
• Rebecca Schiff on connecting humor and emotion, student writing, and how to start a story. | Electric Literature
• Maybe you’re actually a poet: April Bernard, Idra Novey, and Jennifer Tseng on moving between poetry and prose. | The Millions
• “Tracing shapes in the stars is the closest I get to calling a language mine:” Poetry by Tommy Pico. | Public Pool

Also on Literary Hub: Naples the reading list: 15 books from the city of Elena Ferrante · Interview with a Gatekeeper: New Directions’ Declan Spring · A portrait gone missing: from Laura Cumming’s The Vanishing Velazquez

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