LitHub Daily: February 4, 2016

TODAY: In 1921, activist and author of The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan is born.

• Suzanne Joinson on the creative necessity of traveling. | Literary Hub
• What do you do when a self-declared genius demands you to read his masterpiece? | Literary Hub
• Capturing “what might have happened within what happened:” Alexander Chee on writing, and reading, historical fiction. | The New Republic
• The literature of the exhausted: How can writers be expected to innovate and take risks without financial stability? | Dissent Magazine
• “To put it simply, over here, you can read the truth.” Talking with Paul Tang, a Hong Kong bookseller who continues to sell books banned in the mainland. | NPR
• Immersing readers in (books on) their phones: On Editions at Play, a publishing project and online bookstore that sells unprintable books. | The Guardian
• Unwriting the overwhelming loss: On the language-resistant poetry of Bhanu Kapil and Melissa Buzzeo. | Jacket2
• Anjan Sundaram on reducing authorial distance, free speech as a pain receptor, and the importance of local narratives. | Hazlitt
• You couldn’t invent something better than a book: On the “mystery mogul[s]” keeping St. Mark’s Bookshop alive. | The Awl
• The Whiting Foundation has announced a new grant, which will offer allocations of $35,000 to as many as three creative nonfiction works in progress. | The Whiting Foundation

Also on Literary Hub: The novel is dead, celebrity is a disease: Chelsea Hodson interviews Jarrett Kobek · How we adapted Bolaño’s unadaptable masterpiece for the stage · On My Own: Diane Rehm on mourning, living, and dying

---