What was it like to grow up with Wordsworth or Coleridge as your dad? Hint: it was weird. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
I Leave You My Daffodils
Luck of a Genius
At Page-Turner, Willing Davidson interviews Karen Russell, the newly minted MacArthur Genius, Swamplandia! author and 20 Under 40 alum. The conclusion this writer came to after reading their back-and-forth? The phrases “luck lightning” and “King Doomsday” need to be used more often. (FYI, we published our own interview with Russell back in February.)
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A Japanese Country Doctor
Recommended viewing: Kafka's "A Country Doctor" translated into Japanese animation.
The Lost Books
Over at NPR, Parul Sehgal recommends five books “that have been restored to us, that have been reissued, reimagined or — in one instance — presumed lost and discovered for the first time.”
Show Up, Don’t Show Up
"You’ll engage with your advisor in a free-form dialogue about essential skills such as plotting your next career, pacing your financial ruin, structuring TV binge-watching during optimal writing hours, and characterizing all of this as 'learning how to fail.'" Hey, this new low-competency MFA from the fictitious Half Mast College sounds pretty great. Here's our own Hannah Gersen on why she has foregone the MFA route entirely.
RIP Daisy
If at some point in your life you lose a beloved pet, and if, while mourning, you decide to write an obituary, know this -- whatever you write will not be as good as E.B. White’s tribute to his dog. (You can read more pieces like it in the perfectly-titled E.B. White on Dogs.)
Like Etsy, But For Art
"We live in a time of image explosion, but without that network images are just content. There’s simply no possibility of a viral digital success—a 'Call Me Maybe' of painting or photography—because a work only becomes successful upon its art world approbation."