The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1859, Wilkie Collins’s sensation novel The Woman in White, an early example of detective fiction, begins serialization in All the Year Round.
- Casie Dodd on why indie bookstores and small presses make up the backbone of the literary ecosystem. | Lit Hub Bookstores
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Juhea Kim talks to Jane Ciabattari about isolation, ballet, and writing: “At the risk of selling my novel short, I’ll say this: real life is more dramatic than fiction when it comes to ballet.” | Lit Hub In Conversation
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- “For women to seek a direct voice in public life meant calling into question all the received ideas about gender that then governed society and the state.” Stephanie Gorton on systemic sexism in 19th century America. | Lit Hub History
- Read “Portrait of My Mother Studying for Her Citizenship Exam,” a poem by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva from the collection Cowboy Park: “She sits on the corner of her bed, head tilted to one side. Licks the tip of / her thumb and flips through the thick booklet, trying to remember where / we left off.” | Lit Hub Poetry
- Juhea Kim, Orhan Pamuk, and more! These 11 new books are out today. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “Anxiety was Deborah’s thing. In fact, it was her friend.” Read from Naomi Wood’s new story collection, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Richard Brody asks if novelist, screenwriter, and actress Virginia Tracy was the first great American film critic. | The New Yorker
- On lists, the abyss, and François Rabelais’s 16th century novel, Pantagruel. | The Paris Review
- “The poetry written in dark times is proof of something stronger than hope — a faith in the possibility of a world where things could be otherwise.” Orlando Reade meditates on defeat, hope, and Paradise Lost. | Jacobin
- The hottest new literary scam is… republishing classic public domain literature for profit? | Slate
- Julia Webster Ayulo explores the work of the forensic linguists using grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases. | The Dial
- “There’s plenty of plot in the book — and it’s one of those books most people will have trouble putting down — but the action is not, in a sense, where the action is.” Jonathan Franzen talks to Adam Moss about writing The Corrections. | Vulture
