• Earlier this week, Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna opened the 2019 State Senate with a lovely, hopeful poem about America's promise and America's present.

• This year's Jack Straw Writers were selected by poet Kathleen Flenniken. The program helps writers learn how to present their work in recorded and live spoken-word media. The writers are are:

Samar Abulhassan, Dianne Aprile, Josh Axelrad, Christianne Balk, Gabrielle Bates, Leanne Dunic, Shankar Narayan, Sylvia Byrne Pollack, Rena Priest, Putsata Reang, Michael Schmeltzer, and Suzanne Warren.

• A memoir by New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is kicking off another furor over the lack of fact-checking in the publishing industry. It's outrageous that publishers aren't fact-checking their non-fiction titles.

• Artist Mike Stillkey is transforming discarded books into towering installations. He's currently showing new work in Los Angeles.

• Here is a very good memoir comic by Jason Adam Katzenstein about what it's like to read Anna Karenina. It's just about perfect, except I wish he'd shared which translation of the book he read.

• All you writers out there reading this: Please save this video and play it when you're having a moment of doubt. Remember that for every dark place, there's a moment when you're blown away by your own genius that makes it all worthwhile.