TODAY: In 1896, Nancy Cunard is born.
- 32 iconic villains await your judgement! Cast your vote to help your favorite advance in the second round of our bracket–you might help crown them the Best Villain in Literature. | Lit Hub
- “I realized he was kin in telling this complicated, complex story that is Mississippi.” Jesmyn Ward on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Henry Lien sings the praises of My Neighbor Totoro and Hayao Miyazaki’s radical depictions of childhood. | Lit Hub Film
- On the banning of Eric Carle’s Draw Me A Star: “What those who redact Carle’s childlike art probably don’t realize is that it was inspired by his own response to censorship growing up in Nazi Germany.” | Lit Hub Criticism
- Scott Spillman on the scholarship of the 19th-century historians who helped relativize the violent legacy of slavery. | Lit Hub History
- Vanda Krefft explains how biographers who struggle to find primary sources can still recover a past believed to be lost. | Lit Hub Biography
- “The more I read, the more plausible it seemed that football had some of the functions of a religion.” Oliver Smith on soccer and the legacy of the Hillsborough disaster. | Lit Hub Sports
- Megan Volpert on how Alanis Morrisette gave a voice to her fans’s struggles. | Lit Hub Music
- “You know, to be honest, most of what I remember about that weekend was the crowd. The people. Rush Creek packed.” Read from Callie Collins’ novel, Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “Gary resisted, celebrated, skewered, and suffered enormously.” Sam McKinniss on Gary Indiana. | The Paris Review
- Jeremy Denk recommends books about the relationship between music and politics. | The New Yorker
- Constance Grady on 100 years of (rereading) The Great Gatsby. | Vox
- Peter Coviello on the state of academia: “The story of the decimation of higher education over the past decades is well-told, as is the inset story of the decimation of the humanities.” | n+1
- “If fiction is the crafting of lies, why are writers always being asked about the truth?” Abubakar Adam Ibrahim on grief and writing. | The Dial
- Dominic Amerena examines the enduring appeal of Greece and the destination novel. | Los Angeles Review of Books
