LitHub Daily: January 19, 2017

The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day

TODAY:  In 1921, novelist Patricia Highsmith is born.
  • The finalists for the 2017 PEN Literary Awards have been announced. | PEN America
  • “I read my poem, feeling American poets alive and dead by my side, feeling myself as representative in the most grave and beautiful way.” Elizabeth Alexander on composing and reciting a poem for Obama’s first Inauguration. | The New Yorker
  • Listen to me if you know what’s good for you: An advance look at Han Kang’s Human Acts. | Read it Forward
  • “What I call for is a literature that craves the conflict and owns the destruction, a split-mind literature that features fear and handles shock, that keeps self-evident ‘reality’ safely within the quotation marks.” Aleksandar Hemon on writing in the age of Trump. | The Village Voice
  • “Those people who believe themselves to be beyond identity and ideology will, sooner or later, charge us with identity and ideology if we dare to commit that most unnatural act of speaking up and out.” An excerpt from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies. | BLARB
  • “There is an art to dying and the boy does not have it — never mind he has been dying since first he was born.” A short story by Chanelle Benz. | Electric Literature
  • Twice a year, the just-announced Full Stop Reviews Supplement will “feature some of the best reviews of debuts, works in translation, and books published by small presses” from their website. | Full Stop

Article continues after advertisement
Remove Ads



Lit Hub Daily
Lit Hub Daily
The best of the literary Internet, every day, brought to you by Literary Hub.









More Story

Tenacity, the Key to the Writing Life

 I began reading Louise Glück’s poems around the time I handed in the final draft of my first book. Now I can see that...

We Need Your Help:

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member

Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for your contribution, you'll get an ad-free site experience, editors' picks, and our Joan Didion tote bag. Most importantly, you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving.