TODAY: In 1816, at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests—Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori—and challenges each guest to write a ghost story, which culminates in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
- Happy Bloomsday! Karl Whitney on why on June 16th, everywhere you go is a small corner of Joyce’s Dublin; Tim Parks on James Joyce (genius, jerk); on the horrors and polylingual pleasures of translating Ulysses into French; and investigating the man in the macintosh, one of Ulysses’ shady characters. | Literary Hub
- Luke Mogelson on the dark side of longform journalism. | Literary Hub
- “Diski, as she makes vitally clear in her new memoir, In Gratitude, spent her every moment on earth beating the projections of authority figures.” Heidi Julavits on Jenny Diski. | The New York Times
- Sally Rooney and Joanna Walsh discuss the idea of “flow-state,” women and writing, and transgression. | Granta
- “We have always lived in that upside-down world where good and evil were mixed up.” Svetlana Alexievich on making art, Orlando, and exploring love. | The Guardian
- How Kourtney and Scott’s breakup (almost) might relate to Newland Archer and Countess Olenska: Jason Diamond on the parallels between the Kardashians and Edith Wharton. | Guernica
- “Beloved as she is by the progressives of the day, Didion began her career as a staunch conservative.” On Joan Didion’s politics. | The Hairpin
- “A lot of the anxiety of the book… was that I was living through others and through either books or through music.” An interview with Rob Spillman. | Between the Covers
- How such a dark, suspenseful, and genre bending novel can be written by such a charming guy: An interview with Iain Reid, author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things. | Electric Literature
- “I came into the world a young man/Then I broke me off.” From Melissa Broder’s Last Sext. | Tin House
Also on Literary Hub: Speaking with the collaborative authors of The Crow Girl · 200 years after Frankenstein, illustrations from a reissue of the gothic classic · Thank goodness for poverty: from Ramona Ausubel’s Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
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