LitHub Daily: March 18, 2016

TODAY: In 1768, Laurence Sterne, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, dies. 

• Junot Diaz and Hilton Als talk masculinity, science fiction, and writing as an act of defiance. | Literary Hub
• Why you should watch the new Nora Ephron documentary: Michelle Dean on the art of Ephronology. | Literary Hub
• When the apocalypse is your religion: on leaving the church and finding a haven in science fiction. | Literary Hub
• Paul Beatty, Sam Quinones, Margo Jefferson, Maggie Nelson, Ross Gay, and Kirstin Valdez Quade win NBCC awards. | National Book Critics Circle
• Rachel Kushner, Rivka Galchen, and Hari Kunzru discuss the novel as an experience processor, collecting images, and yielding control. | Electric Literature
• On Charles Bernstein, an avant-garde poet who is not “difficult and incomprehensible, forgotten and miserable.” | Tablet Magazine
• From challenging the canon to “aimless, anti-critical, abstracted pro-‘book’ propaganda,” the rise and (limited) utility of “bookchat.” [Possibly bookchat.] | Flavorwire
• “People have been concerned about what my mother and my (hypothetical) children would think of things I’d written—things that had nothing to do with them—long before I ever got pregnant.” On the condescending questions asked of women writers. | The Cut
• On the new prominence and demanding craft of “upmarket historical fiction.” | The Millions
• Mysterious, doomed, reckless, but also deeply alive: On Chicago’s greatest poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. | The Toast
• “How do I speak for a trauma that is not mine yet is felt each and every moment of my life?” Janice Lee on depression, family histories, and the Korean concept of han. | Berfrois
• Happy Friday!! 300 director Zack Snyder is (maybe) adapting The Fountainhead for film. | The Hollywood Reporter

Also on Literary Hub: Michael Seidlinger on what Albert Camus can tell us about life online · Five necessary french books you should read · Dover publishers celebrates 75 years of paper dolls · At the mall food court: from Mark Leyner’s Gone With the Mind

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