99 years ago today, Robertson Davies was born. His beard was magnificent. (His novels are also fantastic — seriously, one of our editors will pretty much talk to you for hours about why you should read What’s Bred In The Bone.)

Roxane Gay: interviewed at the Indiana Review.

Mark Bould’s “Hacking the Arab Spring” at the LA Review of Books.

Andrew David King takes a look back at John McPhee’s 1994 The Ransom of Russian Art.

Carol Blue on Christopher Hitchens’s final months.

Brad Faberman reviewed this past weekend’s Afro-Punk Festival.

Noemie LaFrance on her role in revitalizing Brooklyn’s McCarren Park Pool.

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