LitHub Daily: August 4, 2016

TODAY: In 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley is born. 

• Jade Sharma on the terrible, no good, very bad day she woke up as a debut author. | Literary Hub
• An entourage of one: on the road with Stephen King, from Sewickley, PA to Reno, NV. | Literary Hub
• Jay McInerney on how Dylan Thomas made him want to be a better writer. | Literary Hub
• “I thought, why not write the book that really scares you?” An interview with Colson Whitehead. | The New York Times
• Edmund White on Pale Fire, Nabokov’s “funny and sometimes tender portrait of a homosexual madman.” | The Times Literary Supplement
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie answered questions from readers, revealing insights on writing, her favorite book of the year, and where her best shoes are located. | The Guardian
• “What does it mean when white audiences are suddenly so eager to consume narratives of black suffering?” Britt Bennett on the history and current incarnations of the slave narrative. | The New Republic
• Poetry’s “apparent lack of market value lends it anticommercial credibility that is readily exploitable:” Examining the trendiness of poetry in contemporary art. | The New Inquiry
• Terry McDonell on building mythologies, why some writers don’t get their moment in the sun, and when publishing was like Mad Men plus drugs. | Esquire Classics
• “A language is a window, a different way of seeing, and my hunger for the languages and literatures of the world has much to do with a desire to see and understand as much of the world as possible.” An interview with Krys Lee. | Words Without Borders
• A list of 2016’s highest-paid authors, which will surprise no one and includes Stephen King, James Patterson, and J.K. Rowling. | Forbes

Also on Literary Hub: Does fiction actually make us more empathetic? · On creating an inclusive literary journal · The year that clarity was gone: from Hannah Gersen’s Home Field.

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