LitHub Daily: September 17, 2015

TODAY: In 1903, Frank O’Connor, who “did for Ireland what Chekhov did for Russia,” is born. 

• Belinda McKeon on the vast distances a writer needs to travel to get from beginning to end. | Literary Hub
• Alexander Chee on literary social media in the age of Ferrante | Literary Hub
• More awards! The National Book Awards for Nonfiction longlist includes Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sally Mann, and Tracy K. Smith; the Man Booker shortlist is, as usual, biased against female protagonists. | The New Yorker, Nicola Griffith
• In which Go Set a Watchman is actually analyzed. | Public Books
• An era of unfreedom: an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates. | Vox
• Sofia Samatar, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, and Roland Glasser talk jazz, locomotive literature, and sympathetic magic. | BOMB Magazine
• Edward St. Aubyn’s A Clue to the Exit and existential literature’s contemplation of its own demise. | Full Stop
• “It’s probably not a surprise that so misanthropic and self-absorbed a character as Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov would have held me in thrall.” Revisiting Crime and Punishment as a non-teen. | Critical Mass
• A formidable design in black and gold: five poems about wasps. | The Puritan
• “It had never occurred to me that I could turn my grief into something else, but then I started writing about it.” On learning to express grief through stories. | Guernica

Also on Literary Hub:  The absurd genius of Nein: A Manifesto, in ten quotes · “I had been drinking but I don’t believe I was drunk.” An excerpt from John Banville’s The Blue Guitar

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