TODAY: In 1960, novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston dies.
- On the page, and in the streets, we must write a better story: Molly Crabapple, Yaa Gyasi, and Paul Beatty react to the inauguration of Donald Trump. | The Guardian
- This fall, Doubleday will release The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, which is expanded from the “only written remnant of a children’s fairy tale from [Mark] Twain, though he told his daughters stories constantly.” | The New York Times
- On George Saunders’ children’s book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, “one of the most haunting stories Saunders ever wrote about the anxiously self-interested.” | VICE
- “It isn’t Trump as a character, a human type—the real-estate type, the callow and callous killer capitalist—that outstrips the imagination. It is Trump as President of the United States.” Philip Roth on Donald Trump. | The New Yorker
- “The drama of Wideman’s personal history can seem almost mythical, refracting so many aspects of the larger black experience in America, an experience defined less by its consistencies, perhaps, than by its many contradictions—the stunning and ongoing plurality of victories and defeats.” A profile of John Edgar Wideman. | The New York Times Magazine
- “On some level, I think most writers consider their work to be political, if only in the sense of it creating empathy through narrative, through characters.” A conversation with Melissa Febos and Garth Greenwell. | Slice Magazine
- The winners of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction & Nonfiction and ALA Notable Books List have been announced. | American Library Association
- “Milo [Yiannopoulos]’s case reveals the contradictions of any endeavor that speaks in noble tones about the profit motive.” On the discrepancy between publishing’s purported ideals and its drive towards profit. | New Republic
- Protests run on words as well as actions: On the writers protestors turned to in the Women’s March and the future of literature under the current administration. | Times Literary Supplement
- Alexandra Kleeman on what’s visible and what’s invisible in America, the texture of the internet and of social media, and Duck Dynasty. | Bookanista
- Nick Rougeux has diagrammed the iconic opening lines of famous books to create Literary Constellations. | WIRED
- What we stand to lose if funding to the NEA, NEH, and CPB is cut (and a catalogue of the NEA’s contributions). | MobyLives, Hyperallergic
- The new issue of The Critical Flame features essays on Solmaz Sharif, Phyllis Bottome, and more. | The Critical Flame
- “I care about articulating states or conditions that we don’t have easy language for. I care to find ways to articulate aspects of the inner life. I’m interested in writing as a form of introspection.” An interview with Anuk Arudpragasam. | Guernica
- “I felt stuck in the quicksand of a crossroads, and felt I needed to read up on love for direction. I came across—and was forever changed by—bell hooks’s All About Love.” Ibram X. Kendi on the book that changed his life. | Public Books
Also on Lit Hub:
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Why Camille Dungy can’t get over this election · In the face of constant censorship, Mikhail Bulgakov kept writing · Jesus Christ at the inauguration: Timothy Denevi, trapped among Trump’s true believers · Shawna Yang Ryan on Taiwan and refusing to stay silent · Nationalism is strange and unnatural: A graphic essay by Thi Bui · Paul Auster on activism, James Baldwin and the horrors of Trump · Marilynne Robinson on what we’re losing with President Obama · How Sherlock Holmes got his name · An incomplete dossier of evidence that Donald Trump doesn’t read · How Clara Hale and Audre Lorde helped to make New York
