Fussy’s favorites: Late September and early October

It’s easy to miss the occasional post or two online, so we’ve rounded up some of the highlights from our reader blog the past two weeks.  

Big winners 

• A free short-story collection, of sorts 

• Meet 2021's literary MacArthur Foundation fellows

• Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the Nobel Prize for Literature 

Expanding access 

• James Patterson donates $1.5 million to fight literacy inequity 

• The New York Public Library is done charging late fees

For sale  

• Emily Dickinson’s hair is (maybe) for sale 

• You can buy (a copy of) the first draft of "The Grapes of Wrath"

• The bridge from the Winnie the Pooh books is up for auction

The Middle East  

• Owner of Kabul bookstore has no plans to close up shop

• High-profile authors team up to demand release of Iranian writers 

Excerpts 

• Patricia Highsmith’s journal and Cloud Cuckoo Land

• Letters of Note

• The Lincoln Highway

• Poe For Your Problems