Today is the anniversary of the first flying of the US flag, in 1777 during the Revolutionary War battle at Cooch’s Ridge. And this is a star-spangled day of links, highlighting both America’s own literary culture and America as a magnet for writers and writing from around the world.

To get us started, Electric Lit has a great infographic on America’s libraries.

Mimi Cabell and Jason Huff, in a tour-de-force of metafiction, emailed pages from the Bret Easton Ellis masterpiece American Psycho to each other through gmail and collected the sidebar ads that Google’s algorithm chose after scanning the text. The results are … well, psycho.

Al Jazeera America tells us about a Pittsburgh refuge for foreign writers who have faced persecution in their home countries.

Finally, Sal Robinson at Melville House examines what makes a translation sell.

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Style guide: Texts, performances, and periodicals (including websites) are italicized. Key persons are in bold.