Lit Hub Weekly: Poetic Plagiarism, Joan Didion, and the 25 Most Iconic Book Covers

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Lit Hub Weekly

“Poetry might seem like an inconsequential side-casualty in a larger, noisier war, but in fact it is central to the story of ownership of ideas and expressions.” Sam Riviere in defense of poetic plagiarism. | Lit Hub Poetry

Larry Lockridge reveals the story behind The Snake Pit, Mary Jane Ward’s dark comic masterpiece. | Lit Hub Criticism

Clocking in, chanting, and selling out subjects: Sara Davidson on the ten writing lessons she learned from hanging out with Joan Didion. | Lit Hub Craft

You know it when you see it: the 25 most iconic book covers in history. | Lit Hub

New titles from Jonathan Franzen, Miriam Toews, Val McDermid, and David Sedaris all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

“How did stories make it more likely we would be alive tomorrow?” Lee Child on the invention of fiction. | CrimeReads

How has the pandemic changed what we normally think of as “science writing”? Ed Yong offers some reflections. | The Atlantic

Hilton Als discusses the role that art can play in rebuilding our fractured culture. | Interview

Bad art friends: Robert Kolker tells the story of inspiration, appropriation, and litigation between two writers. | New York Times Magazine

Jonathan Franzen on his most memorable reads. | Elle

“All narratives suddenly ceased. It was just the virus now.” Amitava Kumar talks to Ryan Chapman about responding to the “infodemic” around COVID-19 in his new novel. | BOMB

“I often find myself sitting down to write and then my ghosts arrive.” Ada Limón discusses writing through grief. | NER

Welcome to Pillow-Cat Books, “the first animal-focused bookshop in New York.” | The New York Times

Read a breakdown of the effect of supply-chain snarls on the publishing industry (and get your holiday book pre-orders in now). | Vox

How Indigenous folklore helped geoscientists understand the story of three giant, out-of-place boulders off the coast of the Makin Islands. | Hakai Magazine

“If someone wanted to build a young woman specifically for the purpose of being hated by the internet, she was what they would’ve wrought.” Scaachi Koul considers the legacy of Marie Calloway. | Buzzfeed News

On the connection between baking and the labor of publishing a book. | Catapult

Looking back at a 1950s newsletter dedicated to gay literature, which amassed a mailing list in the thousands despite threats from the FBI. | The New Yorker

Are coffee table books worth it? Design pros weigh in. | The Wall Street Journal

“You have a right to walk out that door. I have an obligation to say what I believe. This is how we get along.” A conversation with Nikki Giovanni. | Public Books

Read a roundtable of authors with roots in Latin America on identity, the publishing world, and their new work. | Teen Vogue

Dave Eggers talks about escaping corporate tech • Miriam Toews on Grapes of Wrath and writing honestly • Amitava Kumar asks, can fiction fight fake news? • Bonnie Friedman reflects on writerly self-doubt • Joshua Ferris on his writing habits and Sesame Street • Kelefa Sanneh traces country music’s evolution from twangy regional phenomenon to Lil Nas X • On questions of procreation and responsibility in post-apocalypse narratives • Colin Kaepernick on abolition and Black liberation • Nadia Wassef reflects on owning the first modern Egyptian bookstore of its kind • How Babar represents the troubling history of colonialism in France • On Constancia de la Mora and the plight of writers in exile • Jocelyn Nicole Johnson on the uses of “vengeful fiction” • How to write a good fight scene • Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen on recording her family’s Farose stories • Patrick Allington reads the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena report alongside Chariot of the Gods? • How fanfiction can inspire meaningful social change • Stephanie Grant unpacks the uses and abuses of disgust • How to be married in 16 simple (and excruciating) steps • Why Kendrick Lamar “wears the mantle of Tupac Shakur” • How Ralph Waldo Emerson helped transform the word “landscape” • Rowan Jacobsen on the primordial pull of the truffle • Why it took scientists so many centuries to grasp genetics • A brief survey of men having opinions about what women are reading • “Queer Love, it turns out, is everything True Love wishes it could be” • What Squirrel Hill can teach us about the power of proximity • Wisława Szymborska recommends learning to write from life  

It’s a cold case like no other. In 1888, five women were brutally murdered in a London slum—attacks so violent the killer earned himself a nickname: Jack the Ripper. But everything you think you know about Jack and those women is wrong.

On the Bad Women podcast, historian Hallie Rubenhold uncovers the real lives of Jack’s victims, revealing discrimination that put them in Jack's path—misogyny women still face today. The show challenges established theories about the murders… causing many supposed Ripper experts to see red.

Listen to Bad Women at https://link.chtbl.com/lithubbadwomen.

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