LitHub Daily: May 13, 2015

TODAY: In 1915, Edith Wharton describes the war in France, “We have passed through streets and streets of such murdered houses, through town after town spread out in its last writhings.”

• “Zink despises many of the conventions of contemporary novels and says she modeled [Mislaid] on Viennese operetta instead.” A conversation with Nell Zink | Literary Hub
• The recipients of this year’s PEN Literary Awards have been announced; the winners include Saeed Jones, Eliza Griswold, and Tina Howe. | PEN America
• Oh god, no: Jonathan Franzen’s sex writing is whatever the opposite of a “hot, hungry microcosm” is. | Jezebel
• A rollercoaster of emotions, from the dizzying heights of a One Direction concert to the terrifying depths of confronting death. | The Cut
• Guess who has thoughts on whether Twitter can count as literature? (Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez. It is obviously Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez.) | Playboy
• The gestation of a novel: Sara Nović’s (and Sam Lipsyte’s) drawings and notes from planning Girl at War. | Blunderbuss Magazine
• Jessica Hopper struggles to find a box that fits, is mansplained at, contains multitudes. | Hazlitt
• Exploring the other woman’s body: a short story by Lauren Schenkman. | Granta
• “Writing by women is often interpreted as smaller, more particular and personal, and presumed to speak specifically to other women.” On judgment and gender in domestic fiction. | The New York Times Sunday Book Review
• Has the future, like “a great wind… cum in the night” for publishing? A crowdfunded novel won the Bookseller industry awards. | The Guardian
• “There are many pleasures to vacuum cleaning,” Nicholson Baker assures us. | The New Yorker
• “loudlypolice, we conduct a raid on love.” Dana Ranga’s first German poem to appear in English translation. | Guernica

Also on Literary Hub: Did Mark Z. Danielewski just reinvent the novel? · The heartbreaking beauty and staggering importance of the public library · A poem by D.A. Powell

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