LitHub Daily: October 22, 2015

• How Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire came to be (in a period of 90 seconds, through dreams). | Literary Hub
• Meet the Young Poet Laureate of London/of Twitter, Alexis Okeowo. | The New Yorker
• Purity, the gift that keeps on giving, ends by calling “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train a “great song” (in “a pointed fuck-you to hipsterism,” perhaps). | Slate
• Congrats to the authors of the “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot” selected for this year’s Pushcart Prize. | The Pushcart Prize
• Eileen Myles and Alexander Chee talk Mercury retrograde, manageable messiness, and Rosie Myles, pitbull/ex-vice presidential candidate. | LA Times
• Alex Mar on marrying God, sky burial, and the politics of witchcraft. | The Millions
• On the televisual quality of City on Fire, which unapologetically adopts the “recognizable formula for a Golden Age serial drama,” and the future of fiction. | The Atlantic
• Constance Wilde, who is (still) misunderstood, minimized, and ridiculed, should be pretty pissed off. | McSweeney’s
• “Money was no concern, she thought, but witnesses now were.” A short story by Miles Klee. | Hobart

Also on Literary Hub: Anthony Marra interviews @GuyInYourMFA, genius ensues · Secrets of the book designer, a new series: on the paperback cover of Dept. of Speculation · In praise of Joe Meno, our wonderful hipster sentimentalist · Jason Diamond reads Henry James every fall, on the same park bench in Washington Square · A poem-a-day countdown to the Irish Arts Center Poetry Fest: day three, Elaine Feeney · The story of a lobotomy from Janet Sternburg’s White Matter