LitHub Daily: August 20, 2015

TODAY: In 1918, author of Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann is born. 

• Kathleen Alcott and Alexandra Kleeman on writing, friendship, and meeting that person whose “brain you’d like to smash into yours until they form a single powerful thinking entity.” | Literary Hub
• Jane Austen, who has already been subjected to zombie re-imaginings of her work, will now be subjected to a rom-com re-imagining of her life. | The Guardian
• The Center for Fiction has announced the shortlist for its First Novel Prize. | The Center for Fiction
• A probing investigation into how Europa has turned its books into “social currency,” “a coveted intellectual brand,” and, most significantly, “Instagram fodder.”| T Magazine
• Pseudo-Aristotle as a proto-E.L. James: on the bestselling sex book of the 1700s. | The Public Domain Review
• Jason Diamond on the dystopian and apocalyptic visions Genesis (the band) inspired in him. | Midnight Breakfast
• The cultural evolution of melancholy, from source of Romantic genius to cousin of depression. | The Point
• Capturing the tragedy of a people who lost their land: Palestinian writing and the Nakba. | Asymptote Journal
• The body is a person: two poems by Morgan Parker. | PEN American Center

Also on Literary Hub: Helen Phillips’s Kafkaesque The Beautiful Bureaucrat · Has anyone actually read Infinite Jest?

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