TODAY: In 2011, President Barack Obama awards Maya Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

• “Along with his authoritarian orders, the president—and his unelected South African Rasputin—have eradicated the basic instruments of debate and debate, particularly phrases themselves.” Rob Spillman on self-censorship and why writers, editors, and publishers shouldn’t obey prematurely. | Lit Hub Politics
• Larissa Pham on baking, heteronormativity, and why we’re drawn to the false promise of the tradwife. | Lit Hub Meals
• Chloé Caldwell on how relationship apps turned her into a bookseller. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Simply in time for Valentine’s Day: 25 writers clarify the anatomy of a great intercourse scene. | Lit Hub Craft
• “One will get the sense that politics has gone off, like a cellular phone, within the darkened theater of Pamela Paul’s thoughts. It’s worse than flawed: It’s impolite.” Andrea Lengthy Chu on Pamela Paul and reactionary liberalism. | New York Journal
• Rachel Davies explores the previous and (disappointing) current of the lately relaunched IKEA Byakorre bookshelf. | Filth
• An interview with the pc scientist (and poetry lover) who has created a genomic LLM to “assist make sense of the genetic library. | Quanta
• “Nothing New”: A (newly) rediscovered poem by Robert Frost. | The New Yorker
• “That is the possibility for a change, an change of positions or a swapping of companions within the pederastic psychagogy of studying.” Peter Szendy considers Phaedrus and the erotics of rereading. | The Paris Evaluation
• Paisley Currah on the “full-throated specific dehumanization” of trans folks in America. | n+1
• Jhumpa Lahiri on translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “At a sure level, the ‘sacred stone’ of the supply textual content should be forged behind my again in order to provide beginning to a brand new model in a brand new language in a brand new second in time.” | The Dial
• Rosalind Harvey considers the work of translation by the lens of attachment idea. | Phrases With out Borders
• Palestinian author Mohammed El-Kurd on “the criminalization of thought” in america and Israel. | Democracy Now!
• “The tradition industries have been totally colonized by complicated monetary gamers (primarily hedge funds and private-equity teams) and their warped logics of sociality.” Ryan Boyd explores the dying of tradition by the hands of finance. | Public Books
• Hermione Hoby considers the proliferation of the Divorce Plot. | Bookforum
• “The individuals who form this future should be us Palestinians—not the individuals who made Gaza appear to be a demolition website, or who now appear to suppose that a whole folks ought to be demolished, too.” Mosab Abu Toha on the rebuilding of Gaza. | The New Yorker
• Vrinda Jagota revisits Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey, ten years on. | Los Angeles Evaluation of Books
• “The struggling was boundless. Questions raised threateningly at existence itself couldn’t be answered; bitter resentments spurted out and piled up.” Poet Muhammad al-Zaqzouq recounts the primary weeks of the battle in Gaza. | New York Evaluation of Books
• “Its legal testimony is indeniable:” Michael Barron on Oromay, the novel that value Ethiopian creator Baalu Girma his life. | The Baffler 

Additionally on Lit Hub:

Reflections on the MLA conference stroll out for Palestine • Why we owe our understanding of mass violence to modernity • Following Central Park’s late, nice Flaco the Owl •  On strolling the world in a shifting physique and gender • Lidia Yuknavitch on expressing loss • Trauma, restoration, and what it means to be a author • How the horrors in Gaza had been formed by different twentieth century atrocities • Haley Mlotek, Shane McCrae, Maggie Su and extra authors take the Lit Hub questionnaire • On Palestine and the complexities of resilience and victimhood • Lauren Francis-Sharma recommends books that discover South African identification • Amanda Peters on her quick story assortment • Learn Timothy Snyder’s first rule of combating fascism • The novelist to neighborhood organizer pipeline • Mohammed El-Kurd and the preservation of Palestinian humanity • Brigitte Giraud tells us concerning the alternate universe the place she’s a pop star • Everlasting questions of race and energy in America • Two poems by Emma Ruth Rundle from the gathering The Bella Vista  • Why Black and Native households wrestle to attain social mobility by schooling • Megan Marshall traces Nathaniel Hawthorne’s household and biographical lies • Why dropping guide blurbs is likely to be simpler stated than performed • Which books are on Sonya Walger’s TBR? • 5 guide critiques you’ll want to learn this week • On Alba de Céspedes’s There’s No Turning Again • Wealthy Benjamin on making sense of a vanishing Haitian heritage • The Nineteenth-century craze to achieve the North Pole • The science behind what we are saying at the start and finish of life • This week on The Lit Hub Podcast • Angelica Mazza considers the romance novel’s mainstream second • Roisín O’Donnell on creating a brief story right into a novel • The perfect reviewed books of the week • Eric Olson talks to Charlotte Wooden • The case for visible creative experimentation in literature • The societal and psychological results of anti-Blackness • How the synth conquered American music • Learn “Joined To All The Dwelling There Is Hope,” a poem by Jonathan Fink • The colourful, illustrated envelopes Edward Gorey despatched to his good friend