LitHub Daily: January 17, 2017

TODAY: In 2002, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, essayist, and short-story writer Camilo José Cela dies.

• The first truly blockbuster audiobook? | Literary Hub
• From life in the editorial trenches to writing a novel: insider tips from Anna Pitoniak. | Literary Hub
• On the novel that took Martin Scorsese three decades to turn into a movie. | Literary Hub
• Interview with a gatekeeper: Archipelago founder Jill Schoolman. | Literary Hub
• Philip Lopate on revisiting a 30-year-old conversation with his mother. | Literary Hub
• “The role of stories to unify—as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize—is more important than ever.” President Obama discusses books and his love of reading with Michiko Kakutani. | The New York Times
• “Language is the tool we use to build our political and democratic structures.” How writers are resisting Trump (and suggestions on how to give back). | Boston.com, GOOD Magazine
• I think genre is as much a lie as gender is: An interview with Eula Biss. | Fiction Advocate
• Following Trump’s attacks of him, Rep. John Lewis’ memoir Walking With the Wind and National Book Award-winning graphic novel March sold out on Amazon. | The Washington Post
• You’ll be so fancy, sending your e-mails: An adapted excerpt from Elif Batuman’s The Idiot. | The New Yorker
• Svetlana Alexievich and 30 other writers have quit the Russian PEN center to protest the expulsion of journalist Sergey Parkhomenko. | The Guardian
• Zhou Youguang, the inventor of Pinyin—which is responsible for both “boost[ing] literacy rates in China and bridg[ing] the divide between the country and the West”—died on Saturday. | NPR
• Valeria Luiselli, Edwidge Danticat, and more: Exciting books from indie presses in 2017. | HTMLGIANT

Also on Lit Hub: Remembering Clare Hollingworth, a truly intrepid reporter · 5 books making news this week: Huck, horror, and highjinks · From Emily Robbins’ new novel

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