Lit Hub Daily: February 15, 2017

TODAY: In 1869, Ghalib, the preeminent Urdu and Persian-language poet during the last years of the Mughal Empire, dies.

• George Saunders on the mental trick that made him a better writer (warning, also discussed: Trump and death). | Literary Hub
• Russians in the White House? Thriller writer Paul Vidich on blackmail, spycraft, and the mess in Washington. | Literary Hub
• Casting The Master and Margarita: a (timely) classic is becoming a movie, and giant talking cats are the new hotness. | Literary Hub
• It’s hard to be a stranger these days: on Book Twitter, ride-sharing, and finding yourself in a James Salter story. | Literary Hub
• Laird Hunt and Emma Donoghue on the complexities of writing historical women. | Literary Hub
• I just want to enjoy your nextness and nearness: Bill Hayes on loving Oliver Sacks. | BuzzFeed Reader
• “All of us who write and teach and make art will need to be braver, for at least the next four years.” Viet Thanh Nguyen interviews Chris Santiago. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• YOU ARE MY [adjective] [noun]. MY [adjective] [noun] [adverb] [verbs] YOUR [adjective] [noun]. On Christopher Strachey’s love poetry-writing computer. | The New Yorker
• Where violence meets life and art, and where the responsibility falls: On Norman Mailer’s friendship with convicted murderer Jack Henry Abbott. | New Republic
• “I don’t want translation to be a metaphor for grief or grief for translation, but in looking at these two practices I hope to find another way of understanding their connections.” On translating one Petrarch poem a day as a form of mourning. | Electric Literature
• Philip Pullman has announced that he will be writing a follow-up “companion” series to the His Dark Materials trilogy. | NPR
• Nearly one-fifth of respondents to a recent study reported that the “voices of fictional characters stayed with them even when they weren’t reading, influencing the style and tone of their thoughts—or even speaking to them directly.” | The Guardian

---