THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1900, Swedish poet and novelist Karin Boye is born.

• Why boys actually need boy bands: “Books and boy bands are a bard’s best balm.” | Lit Hub Music
• Matthew Sitman talks to Brandon Taylor about Minor Black Figures, writing about Black art, and more at The Center For Fiction. | Lit Hub In Conversation
• Why the road to American fascism was paved by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. | Lit Hub Politics
• How Maria Edgeworth’s fiction covertly introduced early 19th-century readers to key economic concepts. | Lit Hub Biography
• The story behind Nighthawks, Edward Hopper’s most famous painting. | Lit Hub Art
• “I had found a way to understand the truth—or a truth—about who I was and where I came from.” Anika Fajardo connects with her Colombian heritage through magical realism. | Lit Hub Craft
• Your creative hobby isn’t just a way to pass time. It could be your first step towards organizing. | Lit Hub Politics
• “Revolutions always begin with ugly stepsisters. Our little sister was neither ugly nor revolutionary.” Read from Intan Paramaditha’s Night of a Thousand Hells, translated by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao. | Lit Hub Fiction
• “The Haredim argued that mitzvot—good deeds performed to fulfill a Torah commandment—cannot be replaced by machines.” Grace Byron explores the Jewish case against AI. | The Nation
• Kaitlyn Greenidge and Samantha Irby talk sexy monsters, guilty pleasures, and Wicker. | Harper’s Bazaar
• Simon Torracinta explores the enduring urgency of John Berger’s work: “It was precisely this rejection of the separation between life and politics that made Berger’s criticism of art so powerful.” | Dissent
• “If the literary ecosystem is dying, how do you make sense of the fact that we’ve gone from 10,000 to millions of works of published fiction annually, in the US alone?” Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette discuss the literary ecosystem. | Public Books
• Aaron Schuster, author of How to Research Like a Dog: Kafka’s New Science, on madness, literary philosophy, and more. | The MIT Press Reader
• “Catapult is intrinsic to L.A. culture and L.A. literature.” Los Angeles writers mourn Catapult Books. | Los Angeles Times

Article continues after advertisement