- Growing up with George Carlin, personal mythology, and learning to laugh at your pain. | Literary Hub
- Joyce Carol Oates discusses her upbringing, which explains the darkness in and sheer abundance of her writing. | NPR
- Mia Alvar on the concept of home, comical opulence, and the similarities between immigrant fiction and science fiction. | Hazlitt
- Rhetorical agility, rigorous introspection, and rueful knowledge: reading Negroland and Between the World and Me. | Bookforum
- On Valeria Luiselli’s “radically collaborative” novel-essay, The Story of My Teeth. | Flavorwire
- A diva’s guide to memoir privilege: Leah Finnegan reviews Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. | Barnes & Noble Review
- On Saul Bellow’s love/hate relationship with the academy and its (ruinous) impact on his fiction. | The New Republic
- You know he shot those beefs: a short story by Percival Everett. | The Offing
- We will never not cover Chipotle selecting new authors to write their burrito wraps, especially when one of them is Jonathan Franzen and the article begins with “the stories are free, but guacamole is still extra.” | The Los Angeles Times
Also on Literary Hub: Five books making news this week: DeWitt, Groff, and the evanescence of #FerranteFranzenism · Casey Rocheteau talks with poet Nate Marshall · Scott Cheshire admits to being Michiko Kakutani · Marlon James’s Booker shortlisted A Brief History of Seven Killings · “Don’t let the door hit you in the immortal soul on the way out,” and other gems: Steve Toltz’s Quicksand