LitHub Daily: February 9, 2016

TODAY: In 1944, author of The Color Purple Alice Walker is born.

• Race, money, and the neoliberal tech-bro: Gideon Lewis-Kraus in conversation with Tony Tulathimutte. | Literary Hub
• Nandini Balial on finding herself in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri. | Literary Hub
• In honor of Mardi Gras, a New Orleans reading list. | Literary Hub
• “She was a beautiful free woman in her life for the length of that walk toward me which is what made it all worthwhile.” Eileen Myles recalls a past love. | The Cut
• “I find conventional novels brutally boring.” An interview with Álvaro Enrique, author of Sudden Death. | VICE
• The woods is your life. You are the axe: Alexander Chee’s guide for writing an autobiographical novel. | BuzzFeed Books
• No longer profound and mysterious, but still delivering awe and pity: Vivian Gornick on rereading Howards End after 40 years. | The New York Times
• “The practice of being an MC is, for me, inextricably linked with the practice of the poet.” An interview with Nate Marshall. | Divedapper
• From Homer’s Odysseus to Murakami’s Noboru Wataya (the cat), Idra Novey presents a brief history of literary vanishings. | Electric Literature
• Adults lie, and children believe them: An excerpt from Muriel Barbery’s The Life of Elves, translated by Alison Anderson. | Words Without Borders
• 20 young writers of color share and explain their favorite poems. | The Huffington Post

Also on Literary Hub: Elizabeth McKenzie on vets, bad mothers, and antidepressants · Books making new this week: sopranos, spirituality, and short short stories · The clean out: from Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, trans. Deborah Smith

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