Lit Hub Daily: February 14, 2017

TODAY: In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s final play,”The Importance of Being Earnest,” opens at the St. James Theatre in London.

• In honor of the early Christian martyr, Saint Valentine, some stories about love: The doomed real-life love at the heart of Dr. Zhivago · Famous literary couples, from happiest to least · The life of an erotic letter-writer-for-hire · What Edna St. Vincent Millay taught me about sex.  | Literary Hub
• “When my father was fired, he lost the job for which his combination of intelligence, pride, and obduracy had made him perfectly suited.” Gregory Pardlo on his father’s participation in the 1981 air-traffic controllers’ strike. | The New Yorker
• I thought of my work as a form of séance with mostly dead writers, some sort of ghostly visitation: An interview with Kate Zambreno. | BLARB
• “The idea of the immigrant is so central to the American dream and the American mythology.” A profile of Viet Thanh Nguyen. | BuzzFeed Reader
• “But written all over that book in smudges, black and blue and pink, green, and yellow, is one experience that I cannot forget: epiphany.” Vann R. Newkirk II’s introduction to a new edition of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. | Essence
• Recommendations of 10 recent Balkan novels, including works by Aleksandar Hemon, Herta Müller, and Miroslav Penkov. | The Calvert Journal
• If I fall in love with a manuscript, I’m pretty sure I’ll get along with its author: A conversation with Elisabeth Schmitz (ft. Michael Thomas, Charles Frazier, Lily King, and others). | The Sewanee Review
• “Smelly vegetable poetry I wanted/to make not like plaid but more rounded” Two poems by Hoa Nguyen. | The Lifted Brow
• The Main Street Writers Movement has launched to “strengthen the national literary ecosystem through passionate engagement at the local level.” | Forest Avenue Press

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