TODAY: In 1935, Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe is born.
- 15 contemporary works of literature by and about refugees. | Literary Hub
- Kristen Evans on how repealing the ACA will have wide-ranging effects on writers and freelancers. | Literary Hub
- Lev Grossman doesn’t actually believe in magic, and other revelations. | Literary Hub
- Kayla Rae Whitaker on coming of age with South Park, and the power of dark comedy in even darker times. | Literary Hub
- “It is a portrait of America, a self-portrait of Herriman, and, I believe, the first attempt to paint the full range of human consciousness in the language of the comic strip.” Chris Ware on Krazy Kat. | New York Review of Books
- On giant merkins and Amazon’s new “one-woman biographical burlesque” about Zelda Fitzgerald, Z: The Beginning of Everything. | The New Yorker
- “Our imaginations are so overpowered and outmaneuvered by the toxic gravity of the global economy that we are happy to amuse ourselves watching the whole world burn instead of doing anything to keep that from happening.” Jessa Crispin on our obsession with dystopias. | The Baffler
- “I dreaded the end of class, when I’d have to look at my phone again—wondering which part of my identity would clash with what fresh news update: partially-disabled, chronically ill, Iranian, American, artist, academic, journalist, woman.” Porochista Khakpour on Trump’s Muslim ban. | CNN
- Some of the questions being raised that are driving the debate about whether the government should fund the NEA, NEH, and CPB. | The New York Times
- “I am trying to write poems to make you feel like you have permission to be yourself and be seen.” An interview with Morgan Parker. | Catapult
- Kaveh Akbar shares poems from the seven countries—Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria—impacted by Trump’s executive order that temporarily bans immigrants from those countries. | PBS
