LitHub Daily: March 31, 2016

TODAY: In 1914, Octavio Paz, poet, professor, Nobel laureate, and Mexican ambassador to India is born. 

• Remembering the great Jim Harrison: reflections from Charles Frazier, Jayne Anne Phillips, Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, Colum McCann, Terry McDonell, and many more. | Literary Hub
• Lynn Steger Strong on seeking the life of a writer and mother. | Literary Hub
• What to read next month: your April Book Preview from Lit Hub contributors. | Literary Hub
• The Los Angeles Times has announced the Critics-At-Large for their books pages, which will include Marlon James, Laila Lalami, and Alexander Chee. | The LA Times
• In Afghanistan, a national book drive has provided 20,000 books and seven libraries to “provinces with a reputation for some of the worst violence of the war.” | The New York Times
• “Writing was the cheapest, quickest way I knew that would get me back home and it was through writing, I think, that I truly fell in love with Bulgaria.” An interview with Miroslav Penkov. | Electric Literature
• Linguist Sarah Thomason discusses seemingly ephemeral words that turn out to be useful, endangered languages, and cultures that refuse to borrow terms. | The Paris Review
• The Bird King himself (Jonathan Franzen) will compete on Celebrity Jeopardy in attempts to procure funds for his people (the American Bird Conservancy). | Vulture
• “[Baudelaire] could always observe because no one was observing him, his purposelessness safeguarded by the warming city streetlights.” Doreen St. Félix on the black flâneur. | GOOD Magazine
• Manuja Waldia on designing Shakespeare covers inspired by both app icons and ancient hieroglyphics. | The Atlantic
• A reading list for all of your Facebook friends who are threatening to move to Canada if the nightmare version of this election is realized. | Signature Reads

Also on Literary Hub: Where’d all the money go? A reading list of novels that tackle economics and finance · A VIDA count from 1916: what has changed for women in publishing in the last 100 years? · An accident: from Elizabeth Poliner’s As Close To Us Breathing

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