LitHub Daily: June 4, 2015

TODAY: In 1924, E.M. Forster’s s A Passage to India is published. 

• Interview with synesthete Quintan Ana Wikswo: “I like to imagine the intricate fireworks in the cerebral cortex as the visual center communes and crosses swords with the language center.” | Literary Hub
• Relatively arbitrary figures about reading entitling certain cities (Seattle, Portland, and Las Vegas) to feel smugger than others. | LitReactor
• Interviews with Lydia Davis, Hilary Mantel, and for the first time ever, Elena Ferrante in the flesh. | The Paris Review
• There is still an audience out there for the written word: on the protean Quiet Lightning, a nonprofit literary organization, submission-based reading series, publisher, magazine, and more. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Voyaging from the “isolated realms of the American poetry scene where other languages can seem as far away as lights in other galaxies” to the work of Catalan poet Melcion Mateu. | Boston Review
• The Windham-Campbell Prizes have announced that Hilton Als will deliver their keynote address, which will also become the inaugural book in their “Why I Write” series; Patti Smith will write the second. | Windham-Campbell Prizes
• In other news regarding “new writing” by Harper Lee, six of her “poignant and especially rare” letters to a childhood friend are expected to fetch $250,000 at auction. | LA Times
• “The morning she found [the dog] dead in the kitchen she thought This has got to be one of the best days of my life.” A short story by Anna Lea Jancewicz. | Necessary Fiction
• “The page is treated as an open field; words flow in many directions; sentences are tucked into the corners of pages.” Sarah Gerard continues to investigate the relationship between writers and their journals. | Hazlitt
• Ali Smith has won the Bailey Prize for fiction for her sixth novel, How To Be Both. | The Independent

Also on Literary Hub: Michele Filgate on female friendship · Inside the dark psyche of a figure skater

 

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