LitHub Daily: August 26, 2016

TODAY: In 1904, Christopher Isherwood (left and right) is born. He’s pictured here with W. H. Auden (center), photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1939. 

• How a self-published writer of gay erotica beat sci-fi bad guys Sad Puppies at their own game. | Literary Hub
• Jacqueline Woodson talks Bushwick and the brilliance of black girls. | Literary Hub
• How to write coincidence: on writerly manipulation, from E.M. Forster to Flannery O’Connor. | Literary Hub
• “I still find it astonishing that we all seem to be connected with one another somehow.” On W.G. Sebald’s five-year correspondence with Martin and Lore Oswald, who escaped from Germany in World War II. | The New Yorker
• 45 highly anticipated fall books, including works by Elena Ferrante, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Nell Zink. | Vulture
• Remembering the life and work of poet Max Ritvo, who died this Tuesday. | Milkweed Editions
• “Why must the flâneuse be restricted to being a female version of a male concept, especially when no one can agree on what the flâneur is anyway?” Lauren Elkin reimagines the wandering woman. | The Paris Review
• A story about narcissists or a narcissist is often serving some other function as well: Kristin Dombek and Dayna Tortorici in conversation. | FSG Work in Progress
• On the newly dubbed VICKS/VAPO/RUB/POETICS, “contemporary Latino-American experimental first-person… named after the general healing salve that sits on the skin, heats and cools by turns, and evaporates, relaxing and expanding the muscles and cavities of the body.” | The Fanzine
• “Now I see even a little gay sex & French poetry would make some folks better citizens.” A poem by Chen Chen. | BuzzFeed Reader
• E-readers haven’t come with books: On ways of reading and the potential technology offers storytelling. | The Wild Detectives

Also on Literary Hub: Why can’t Irish writers escape the sea? · Remembering Brooklyn’s great and weird Community Bookstore  · A perfect spiral: from Robert Bausch’s The Legend of Jesse Smoke

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