TODAY: In 1968, Mercedes de Acosta dies.  What’s Wendy Chen reading now and next? Diana Arterian annotates the poet’s nightstand. | Lit Hub Criticism Maris Kreizman on PEN America and what happens when “some free speech is more privileged than others.” | Lit Hub Craft “Even where Audubon’s original was complete, Havell sometimes made improvements.”...

“Harry got into an altercation with the New Yorker fiction writer Jamacia Kincaid, who came over to Gayfryd and with an air of hoity-toity bemusement said, ‘I am puzzled by this event. Why are there so many rich people here?’ (Because writers are the cheapest people in the world and don’t care about other writers, so PEN has to be funded by rich people...

Our feast of fabulous reviews this week includes Sam Sacks on Colm Tóibín’s Long Island, Maggie Shipstead on Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall, Lara Feigel on Maggie Nelson’s Like Love, Jennifer Wilson on This Strange Eventful History, and Lauren LeBlanc on Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book...

1. The last time it happened, I was driving the family home from my mother-in-law’s house and saw a big animal at the side of the road with its legs up. Something about the corpse, frozen in the shape of a last action like the statue of some Greek myth, sparked an acute feeling of sadness for all the pain that goes on every moment around us, the kind...

Lucas Mann’s collection Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances is the book I wish I had fifteen years ago when I was in my early thirties, at home with a newborn. Those were days when I’d spend eight hours or more in near constant contact with my son, often with no adult interaction (I didn’t even have a smartphone at the time, so...

For as long as I can remember, my father has kept a garden journal. A black and white speckled thing, composition style, perched perennially atop his desk. The entries are short and to the point. 6.29.13. Tied up rest of tomatoes. Put netting on bean trellis. Gardening extends to all plant and animal production: collecting maple sap, building a chicken...