LitHub Daily: April 4, 2016

TODAY: In 1928, poet Maya Angelou is born. 

• From Vietnam to Iraq: Viet Thanh Nguyen on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dark prophecy. | Literary Hub
• The magic of Syrian food before the war, from the table to the street | Literary Hub
• In conversation with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, the “oldest living debut novelist.”| Literary Hub
• “I like to think that what literature can do that op-ed pieces and other communications don’t do is describe felt experience.” An interview with Maggie Nelson. | The Guardian
• Experimental fiction for her: On You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and other recent avant-garde fiction focusing on the female experience. | Public Books
• Claudia Rankine’s AWP keynote speech addressing “what keeps us uncomfortable in each other’s presence.” | Vulture
• I sit down at the desk and I type: Lydia Davis, Ann Goldstein, and other esteemed literary translators share their processes. | The Wall Street Journal
• Reading “that vital something produced by the interplay between plot and subtext, between what happens in a story and what a story is about:” On Diane Williams’s Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “I was born aflame, I believe.” A poem by Camille Rankine. | The New York Times
• Curtis Sittenfeld suggests ten books for fans of Pride and Prejudice, one of which features guinea pigs in period costumes. | Barnes & Noble Reads
• July is super cruel also: Famous poems rewritten to include climate change. | McSweeney’s

Also on Literary Hub: Interview with a bookstore: Itinerant Literate, a Charleston bookmobile baby in the making · How Stoner was reborn: how the NYRB chooses what to reissue. · Snakes on a plane: from Jean Giono’s Hill

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