LitHub Daily: January 26, 2016

• Elizabeth McKenzie on “surrealist” word games, nitrous oxide, and novel writing as an act of decomposition. | Literary Hub
• Bridget Read on why the biased, mean, and brilliant Janet Malcolm actually hates the new Ted Hughes biography. | Literary Hub
• “We are a sick culture, and I believe that art can help.” Alice Walker and Colm Toibin discuss the film adaptations of their novels. | The New York Times
• John Keene, Dawn Lundy Martin, and other writers share their most anticipated books coming out this spring. | BOMB Magazine
• A Shakespeare squared or cubed: looking back on the Goethezeit (The Age of Goethe). | The New Yorker
• “Families break up for such subtle, imperceptible sorts of reasons.” An essay from David Searcy’s Shame and Wonder. | Hazlitt
• MFA Ponzi schemes, individuality vs. art movements, and intentional entrances: Reflections on poetry’s “mainly white room.” | Hyperallergic
• “And so there I was at forty-six, in Florida, sitting on a bench next to Wendell, a year into sleeping with his wife, a month after he and I had taken part in sending seven people to their deaths out over the Atlantic.” A short story by Patrick Ryan. | Catapult
• Shirley Jackson (Empress of the Village Ghosts), Virginia Woolf (Witch of The Waters, The Porcelain, The Lexicon), and other literary witches, illustrated. | Okey-Panky
• In honor of Australia Day, novelists, booksellers, librarians and critics select their most beloved Australian books. | Sacred Trespasses

Also on Literary Hub: Photographing the dead zones of global travel · Books making news this week: life, death, and squirrels · An expensive telegram from Rachel Cantor’s Good on Paper