TODAY: In 1840, novelist, short story writer, and poet Constance Fenimore Woolson, who chose a literary career over marriage and motherhood, is born. 

• Dr. Seema Jilani on the hypocrisy of Western liberal institutions and why “nothing could have prepared me for a Gaza emergency room.” | Lit Hub Politics
• Julie Zigoris chronicles how the San Francisco Rare Book Fair showcased the resilience of booksellers in the wake of the LA wildfires. | Lit Hub Bookstores
• “The transition narrative in mainstream art focuses so much on the externalities of a changing body, rather than the internality that is suddenly realizing you have what might be dubbed a soul.” Emily St. James why POV matters when writing a trans narrative. | Lit Hub Craft
• Emily Hodgson Anderson meditates on how isolation and companionship affect a writer’s life. | Lit Hub Memoir
• “Considered together, the textile and Arlonzia’s testimony bring attention to human suffering, resilience, creativity, and grace both within and beyond Gee’s Bend.” How quilting preserves memory in a Black farming community in Alabama. | Lit Hub Art
• Jeffery Renard Allen writes a letter to Jimi Hendrix: “Know that I carry you everywhere, that you more than anyone on this planet have shaped me as a writer.” | Lit Hub Music
• Nicole Graev Lipson reflects on Thoreau, the self, and the elusiveness of solitude in motherhood. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “A gritty bench, a grubby river, /And an ongoing wave of wonderment:” Read “The Old Current,” a poem by Brad Leithauser from the collection The Old Current. | Lit Hub Poetry
• “The interview room seemed suddenly smaller to Sara, the walls close enough to touch.” Read from Laila Lalami’s novel, The Dream Hotel. | Lit Hub Fiction
• “Even in her wildest dreams, she had not thought that Bua would haunt her after death.” Read Banu Mushtaq’s story “The Shroud,” translated by Deepa Bhasthi. | The Dial
• “Meanwhile, here on earth, the syrup of wahoo still splashes around inside Tom’s books.”  Gary Lippman remembers his friend, Tom Robbins. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Harper will publish a collection of previously unreleased stories by Harper Lee. | The New York Times
• A brief history of the banning of Oscar Wilde’s Salome. | Smithsonian Magazine
• “This exchange of care exemplifies a decommodified mutual aid relationship built upon respect and recognition rather than charity.” On the role of care work in anti-imperialist struggle. | Public Books
• Sophie Lewis talks to Grace Byron about what happens when “emancipating womanhood is not inherently incompatible with, for instance, eugenic or imperial violence.” | The Baffler

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