Lit Hub Daily: March 11, 2025

TODAY: In 1893, artist, author, translator, and illustrator Wanda Gág is born. Gág is best known for writing and illustrating the children’s book Millions of Cats, the oldest American picture book still in print.  The not-so-sweet 16 evil-doers left vying for the title of Best Villain in Literature need your help! Vote in the third round of the Ides of March Madness to send your favorite villains to the top. | Lit Hub “Moving between identities is what I most crave as an artist. And it’s also all my characters want.” Sanjena Sathian on what it means to write like a girl. | Lit Hub Craft Torrey Peters, Karen Russell, Alissa Wilkinson and more! These 25 new books are out today. | Lit Hub Reading Lists Callie Collins, Susan Morrison, Mariam Rahmani and more authors answer our burning literary questions. | Lit Hub In Conversation Karen Russell on receiving a hotel ice bucket as a courtship gift, writing bad poetry, and watching The Simpsons. | Lit Hub Craft “By all appearances—in the ten years since immigrating to Philadelphia in 1959—Vinent Conlon had settled into life as an average Irish-American dad.” Ali Watkins on the Americans who armed the IRA during The Troubles. | Lit Hub History Bryan Charles on sharing a name with another (prolific) author: “I did not wish to be mistaken for Brian Charles. But I was not sure I wanted to be Bryan Charles anymore either.” | Lit Hub Memoir How the origins of an iconic American invention began with Benjamin Franklin’s cold feet. | Lit Hub History “WHY DON’T YOU HATE ME?” Read from Natasha Brown’s novel, Universality. | Lit Hub Fiction How Emily Dickinson transformed letters into poetry. | MIT Press Reader Amanda Crocker explores the world of far right imprints. | Jacobin  “In Palestine, the obscurities one encounters are often the only things that can be experienced.” Max Weiss interviews Adania Shibli. | The Paris Review ICE has detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University. | Democracy Now! Harriet Baker recounts Sylvia Townsend Warner’s rural life. | Granta David Cole considers how universities are responding to anti-DEI pressure from the Trump administration (not courageously, it turns out). | New York Review of Books