LitHub Daily: December 22, 2016

• The best essays we published this year, as chosen by the Lit Hub editors. | Literary Hub
• Blair Braverman has had enough of your contemplative nature writing. | Literary Hub
• Jason Diamond on work as salvation, and battling through depression to finish a book. | Literary Hub
• “One cannot dispute that the president has been an exemplary ambassador for literature, a leader who has championed reading as a way to open our eyes to the world, to nurture understanding, to see ourselves in others.” Reflecting on Obama’s literary presidency. | San Francisco Chronicle
• This thing would make me happy; this object would please me: An excerpt from Jami Attenberg’s All Grown Up. | Lenny
• “Hybridity is what the characters and the book, and hopefully its readers must engage with.” An interview with Peter Ho Davies. | Fiction Writers Review
• For those curious about Junot Díaz’s breakfast preferences, your answers have arrived. | Extra Crispy
• First, tell your story in three sentences: Writing advice from Benjamin Hale. | The Story Prize
• From Pedro Almodóvar’s take on Alice Munro to the Swedish-language adaptation of A Man Called Ove, the best films inspired by literary material of 2016. | Signature Reads
• Independent presses share the books that made their years, that deserved to do better, and that they wished they had published. | The Guardians

Also on Lit Hub: Our top ten most read stories of the year · Pantsuit nation: turning culture into commodity ·Read from Otared, by Mohammad Rabie, translated by Robin Oger.