LitHub Daily: April 7, 2016

TODAY: In 1931, Donald Barthelme, America’s weirdest literary genius, is born. 

• The greatest writers’ group in the history of Iowa. | Literary Hub
• The bookstore fights back: Ann Patchett on the birth of Parnassus Books. | Literary Hub
• Fatima Bhutto on the library of her grandfather, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. | Literary Hub
• A. Igoni Barrett on Nigeria, language, and striving for the universal. | Literary Hub
• The Guggenheim Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2016 genius grants, including Chris Kraus, Jericho Brown, and Jenny Offill. | ARTNews
• A countdown to the Man Booker Prize in interviews with the finalists, beginning with the writers and translators of The Four Books, Tram 83, and White Hunger. | Words Without Borders
• “To commit to making a book, you have to confront a despair about whatever you’ve done in the previous years it took to get there.” An interview with Hilton Als. | The Brooklyn Rail
• A strange combination of decorum and distress: Henri Cole on the poetry of John Berryman. | The New Yorker
• “We – readers, reviewers, publishers – have forgotten how to engage with African novels except from the standpoint of the social or political issues they address.” On the ways in which we talk about African fiction. | The Guardian
• Phil Klay on being the weirdo memorizing poetry, self-defintions, and the cyclical nature of narratives. | The Rumpus
• “Finding it right now is almost crazy… like spotting a panda.” Just preceding the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, a new First Folio has been discovered. | The New York Times
• Joining the illustrious ranks of such celebrities as Anthony Bourdain, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Derek Jeter, Lena Dunham will launch her own publishing imprint. | BuzzFeed Books

Also on Literary Hub: Kathryn Harrison on the impossibility of seeing yourself · The Grumpy Librarian: what to read when you get thrown out of book club · I cannot lose you: from Marion Coutts’s memoir, The Iceberg

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