LitHub Daily: December 14, 2016

TODAY: In 1916, Shirley Jackson is born. 

• Happy 100th birthday, Shirley Jackson, wherever you may be haunting at the moment.
• In praise of Zadie Smith’s London: ten British writers find themselves in NW.
• Claire Messud hates her dogs (but also absolutely loves them).
• An egomaniacal fabulist with little regard for the truth… (Munchausen, it’s the return of Munchausen).
• In support of Planned Parenthood, four young writers on the literary women who inspired them.
• “I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible.” Ta-Nehisi Coates on President Obama’s legacy. | The Atlantic
• Shirley Hazzard, author of fiction “dense with meaning, subtle in implication and tense in plot,” died on Monday at 85. | The New York Times
• E.R. Braithwaite, diplomat and author of fiction and non-fiction works, died on Monday at 104. | The New York Times
• On Walter Benjamin’s afterlives and the “burgeoning ‘Benjamin Industry.’” | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Surveys, The Ghosts of Birds, and beyond: Longreads contributors share books they believe deserved more recognition in 2016. | Longreads
• How creators function under tyranny: 5 books that examine the many ways artists responded to the Nazi regime. | Hyperallergic
• “We never wanted to kill // only to stay alive” A poem by Christopher Soto. | Tin House

Also on Lit Hub: Five crime reads for the depths of winter · How a new law threatens California booksellers · From Luis Cardoso’s Chronicle of the Murdered House

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