Get to know this year’s National Book Award finalists. | Lit Hub
“Our teeth tell stories about us, about the way that we have lived, about where we come from, about our habits, our health, and status.” Angelique Stevens muses on dentistry, poverty, and inequality. | Lit Hub Memoir
Ryan Holiday on using the lessons of stoicism to survive opening a small-town bookstore mid-pandemic. | Lit Hub Philosophy
Kevin Wilson’s Now is Not the Time to Panic, Lynn Steger Strong’s Flight, and Hugh Bonneville’s Playing Under the Piano all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
Lavie Tidhar on the best (and friendliest) robots in science fiction. | CrimeReads
On the picket line with the unionizing employees of HarperCollins: “Publishing has long been a low paying industry with long hours for its entry and midlevel employees.” | The New York Times
How do we understand the state of American politics today? These books might help. | The Atlantic
“Translating fiction allowed me to channel another kind of creativity, to have those voices in my head.” A conversation between Monique Ilboudo and her translator, Yarri Kamara. | Words Without Borders
Haruki Murakami reflects on writing in a foreign language: “I learned that there was no need for a lot of difficult words—I didn’t have to try to impress people with beautiful turns of phrase.” | The Guardian
“It’s tempting to imagine that the talented young Mary shut herself away in her chamber and began to write her teenaged heart out.” Bryan VanDyke on Mary Shelley’s journals and the non-linearity of creativity. | The Millions
Read a newly translated Annie Ernaux story. | The New Yorker
Get a first look at the TV adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred. | Vanity Fair
“As in all imaginative literature—all fiction, perhaps—the story represents at once the persistence of childhood and a memorial to its loss.” Andrea Long Chu on The Velveteen Rabbit. | Vulture
Carolina A. Miranda explores a Joan Didion-inspired art exhibit at the Hammer Museum: “It is not composed of vitrines bursting with manuscripts. Nor are there old ashtrays or a favored typewriter.” | Los Angeles Times
This NaNoWriMo, why not write a really bad novel? | Slate
“Why do living artists subsist on part-time gigs while dead ones become immersive money-printing machines for corporate enterprise?” Abbey Fenbert on Van Gogh and the exploitation of artistic labor. | Catapult
Stephanie McCarter discusses her approach to translating the sexual violence of classical poetry. | The Washington Post
Phillip Vance Smith, II, the incarcerated editor of The Nash News in North Carolina, discusses his life at the prison newspaper. | JSTOR Daily
“If moralizing is now misplaced in literature, what space is there to write about imperiled people, except to set them up as subjects for recreational grieving?” Nazish Brohi reflects on storytelling and the limits of empathy. | Guernica
“I find myself thinking about Joe Brainard whenever I listen to ‘All Too Well.’” JoAnna Novak on the power of writing in the present tense. | The Paris Review
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