LitHub Daily: May 19, 2015

TODAY: In 1925, Malcolm Little, later X, was born.

• Meet Sergio Pitol, Mexico’s “total writer.” | Literary Hub
• The act of love in the age of Polaroid reproduction: a short story by Gunnhild Øyehaug, translated by Lydia Davis. | The Paris Review
• Kazuo Ishiguro on the battle of memory, the pressure to produce, and the long haul of love. | The Los Angeles Review of Books
• “I do not believe that Breivik himself has anything to teach us.” Karl Ove Knausgaard reflects on Norway, the Utøya massacre, and the impetus to kill. | The New Yorker
• In response to outrage at Vanessa Place’s racially insensitive Twitter project, AWP has removed her from its subcommittee. | Change.org, AWP
• Whiteness operating in the system of literature: on Vanessa Place, Kenneth Goldsmith, and the “appropriation” of black experiences. | Harriet
• BBC is making a drama based on the lives of the Brontë family; unfortunately, it will feature live actors and not animated versions of Branwell Brontë’s portraits. | BBC
• Believing that the future will be more than “a heap of crap:” on optimism, Occupy Wall Street, and utopias. | Triple Canopy
• The closure of the City University of Hong Kong’s MFA program, which pairs students from 20 countries representing a variety of languages with esteemed authors, is an issue of free speech. | The Guardian
• Crystallizing slush piles: suggestions on how literary magazines could better accept submissions. | Electric Literature

Also on Literary Hub: Edward St. Aubyn’s suicide pact ·  Norwegian writers not named Knausgaard · A story about marriage from Graham Swift

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