LitHub Daily: December 22, 2015

• Instead of Christmas, suggests Sasha Sagan, we should celebrate the return of the light, i.e. today, the solstice. | Literary Hub
• Counting down the 50 biggest literary stories of the year: today, 50 to 36. | Literary Hub
• Christopher Hitchens on the importance of being George Orwell. | Literary Hub
• “It’s not in my power to overcome this cold, snowy expanse with a wave of my hand.” On Vladimir Sorokin’s epically bleak The Blizzard. | The Atlantic
• In which Shelia Heti profiles Raffi, darkly interprets “Down By the Bay” with him, wonders, wonders what sex with him would be like. | Vulture
• “I would sit there for eight hours a day thinking of one line and it became delicious.” How Robin Coste Lewis overcame brain damage and became a National Book Award-winning poet. | The Guardian
• Taking “aim at structural racism and the tyrannical mediocrity of white male writers to great effect:” The best literary criticism of 2015. | Flavorwire
• “I wanted to capture physical modes of being that remind us of our enormous capacity to feel.” Tracy O’Neill discusses writing The Hopeful. | Vol. 1 Brooklyn
• Building a sanctuary through art: On Juliet Jacques’s “staggeringly vulnerable and groundbreaking” memoir, Trans. | Full Stop
• “The point of a party is to make us forget we are solitary, wretched and betrothed to death,” and other entertaining tips from Michel Houellebecq. | The Believer
• “What’s the deal with your face, Dad?” Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo translates Danish poet Niels Lyngsø. | Words Without Borders

Also on Literary Hub: In honor of the longest night of the year, the first-ever photographs of animals at night  · Books making news this week: winos, art critics, and belated praise · An ode to cold and snow: scenes from Mark Helpin’s Winter’s Tale · One of NPR’s Best Books of 2015: Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts