Jincy Willett on how (and why) to base a character on yourself. | Lit Hub Craft
“Why take a cast of a dead person’s face when so many people cannot bear to look at the dead body at all?” Hayley Campbell considers the many lives of death masks throughout history. | Lit Hub History
Alexa T. Dodd recounts what she learned about art and success after five years with a predatory vanity press. | Lit Hub Memoir
Mutated crabs and zombie fish: How an unlucky Texas fisherman stumbled upon an environmental catastrophe. | Lit Hub Nature
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Emma Donoghue, Sigmund Freud, and T. S. Eliot all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
Samantha Ladwig on two August thrillers that complicate the definition of victim. | CrimeReads
What did we learn from the DOJ v. PRH case? | The New York Times
Amanda Gorman talks to Kaitlyn Greenidge about poetry, possibility, and changing the world. | Harper’s Bazaar
“I read the book as a critique of machismo. Machismo is self-romanticizing, after all, whereas everything about Tripticks reads like a subversion or parody of self-romance.” Danielle Dutton on Ann Quin’s Tripticks. | The New Yorker
Alyson McCabe considers the contradictions of crime novelist Patricia Highsmith. | NPR
Nick Ripatrazone makes the case for John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” as the perfect late summer read. | Gawker
“If writers make mistakes, explore mistakes, celebrate mistakes, and embrace lives that are mistakes, they also can use mistakes.” Ed Simon parses typos and misprints. (Or, an ode to copyeditors.) | The Millions
Naseem Jamnia lists five science fiction and fantasy books that take place in queernormative worlds. | Tor.com
“Inopportuneness in all its manifestations—bad timing, rotten luck, missed connections—is the dominant theme of Italo Svevo’s life, work, and afterlife.” Nathaniel Rich discusses one of Italy’s greatest authors. | NYRB
Autumn Fourkiller recommends books that revolve around Indigenous voices and rebirth. | Longreads
“The criticism underscores the fact that decades after its publication, A People’s History still matters, and it is still sparking debate in history classrooms.” Remembering Howard Zinn at 100. | The Nation
Arimeta Diop offers a brief history of the Trumpworld tell-all. | Vanity Fair
Brian Michael Murphy explores the sinister history of libraries fumigating “foreign” books. | Lapham’s Quarterly
“Since childhood, Murata has been troubled by an intense and sometimes painful effort to be an ‘ordinary earthling.’” Thu-Huong Ha profiles Sayaka Murata. | Wired
Nate Rogers tells the story of missing “Hotel California” lyric sheets—featuring rare book dealers, Nabokov’s estate, and the “relentless” Don Henley. | Los Angeles Times
Jessamine Chan walks us through the process of getting her book published—from first draft to Today show appearance. | The New York Times
