Recommended Listening: On NPR’s All Things Considered, Petra Mayer offers advice to “literature’s unpunished villains.”

Recommended Reading: On Elizabeth Bishop’s secret writings.

“Is grief a condition of love? Does grief prevent us from making peace within ourselves and with each other?” For the Kenyon Review, Rosebud Ben-Oni writes on grief as waiting. Pair with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Millions essay on grief and art.

If you’re the kind of person who might fall asleep while reading a page-turner, you’re not alone. For Read It Forward, Jonathan Russell Clark writes about the challenge of literary sleepiness. For more of his writing, check out his essay on the art of the final sentence for The Millions.

Can Google help translate a novel? Over at Publishers Weekly, Esther Allen explores Google Translates’ linguistic abilities. Also check out this Millions essay about translators at work.

Recommended Listening: Poet Rachel Zucker speaks with Erika Meitner about straight-forward poetics and poetry as a tool for social justice.

“But artifacts cannot speak for themselves; the meaning of a museum is determined by acts of interpretation.” Year in Reading alumnus Vinson Cunningham writes on the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Over at Aeon, Jenny Davidson explores what makes a great sentence. As she puts it, “A great sentence makes you want to chew it over slowly in your mouth the first time you read it. A great sentence compels you to rehearse it again in your mind’s ear, and then again later on.” Pair with our own Michael Bourne’s essay on sentence structure for creative writers.

Over at Lit Hub, Paul Holdengraber interviews Tracy K. Smith about parenting, loving books, and identity. Pair with Sophia Nguyen’s Millions review of Smith’s new memoir, Ordinary Light.

Recommended Reading: How to write about trauma.