Lit Hub Daily: January 15, 2020

• What is at stake when we write literary criticism? James Wood on deconstructing texts and understanding literature. | Lit Hub
• “Silicon Valley is just one of the massive American institutions that reflect the interests and anxieties and failures of our time.” Kristin Iversen profiles Anna Weiner. | Lit Hub Tech
• Nicholas Shaxson looks at recent books about the power of global finance, and the untaming of corporations. | Lit Hub
• “The disillusion of the self can make space for something beyond it.” On Garth Greenwell’s revolutionary erotics. | Lit Hub
• How Jessica Andrews found permission to tell her story in the work of Adrienne Rich, Jeanette Winterson, Audre Lorde, and more. | Lit Hub
• “He quarreled with Lincoln in the Civil War, which wasn’t good for anybody’s historic reputation.” Steve Inskeep on the tumultuous rise and fall of John Frémont, American adventurer turned politician. | Lit Hub History
• Laura Elliot recommends 10 novels that evoke a childhood of curiosity and sleuthing. | CrimeReads
• Louise Erdrich, Natalie Diaz, and Richard Wagamese all feature among the Most Anticipated Books by Indigenous Authors of the First Half of 2020. | Book Marks
• The Atlantic will be publishing a lot more fiction from here on out—starting with a new short story by Lauren Groff. | The Atlantic
• Ex-pope Benedict XVI claims he did not, in fact, co-author The Depth of our Hearts, a book critical of Pope Francis. | Yahoo News
• There’s an Alexander Pushkin-themed theme park in the works, based on the imaginary land of “Lukomorye.” Set to open in St. Petersburg in 2023, Lukomorye will feature a funfair market, swan lake, fairy tale forest, and more. | CLAD
• Sibylle Berg, the Zurich-based author of more than 15 novels, has won this year’s Swiss Grand Prix Literature. | Swiss Info
• “I have to do what I can to help make a place for sunrise, for there to be a sunrise.” Joy Harjo discusses her role as poet laureate. | The Washington Post
• These LGBTQ fantasy novels “imagine worlds where homophobia does not exist.”  | The Guardian
• One tool to encourage reluctant young readers: engaging graphic stories. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: On Reading Women, Jami Attenberg discusses the unlikely inspiration for her latest novel • Before beauty vlogging, there were Renaissance “Books of Secrets” • On the obscure  editions of Jane Austen novels that made her internationally known • Read a story from Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s collection Fabulous.