So, fun fact: today is my birthday! And no, I will not tell you how old I am and it was very rude of you to ask (j/k. I’m 37). Also, I have no idea what is happening with the graphic I chose for this week, but the pineapples make me happy and it’s my birthday so whatever.

Over on LitHub, the moment Sylvia Plath found her genius
Second fun fact: this year’s birthday present to myself is a The Bell Jar tattoo I’m getting this Saturday. Truthfully, I came to love Sylvia Plath via her husband Ted Hughes. I prefer his poetry (Crow, in particular, although I also own the Collected Poems as well) but there’s something about The Bell Jar that resonates strongly with me. Maybe it’s the view of New York as seen through the eyes of a young writer. Maybe it’s the shared experience of mental health struggles. Maybe it’s the fact that Esther Greenwood’s last name is the Anglicized version of my own. Regardless of the why, the what is a book that speaks to me at a level very few other books do.

Nylon has the story on JK Rowling suing her assistant for financial misconduct
The woman spent £1,200 ($1,572) on two cats. CATS, PEOPLE. Look. I’m a cat lover. We have four of them. When I adopted my very first cat, Chloe, she was on sale. I paid $20. What kind of cats are you getting that cost $750 each?!

LitHub on why all first person narrators are unreliable
I love a good unreliable narrator, whether I know they are unreliable from the beginning or not. (My favorite is Rob from In the Woods, who tells you from the beginning that he’s a liar and yet you kind of forget all about that until the very end.) Still, this essay is not wrong in that when telling our stories, we all hedge the truth slightly to our advantage.

For the writers out there, Electric Literature has seven free or cheap writing residencies you can apply to
Note to self for when I write my next book …..

This week’s Things Jill Found Interesting is the story of a woman who went to an emergency room for her asthma attack and was unable to find an open entranced and died outside
Uh, as someone who has had her own life or death emergency room situation this is utterly terrifying. (Also, and this will make sense once you start reading the piece written by Laura’s husband, but I have a particular pet peeve for the phrase “It’ll be in the last place you look.” Because of course it will. Because after you find whatever you’re looking for, you stop looking. I understand that in this particular sense of the essay they are trying to convey a sense of how long they were looking and all of that, but seriously. Jill’s pet peeve. Another fun fact.)

This week’s hot picks you may have missed from last week are Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan and Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean. YA fantasies featuring competition among young women? Sign me up.