Lit Hub Daily: April 16, 2020

• LIFE IN A PANDEMIC: Poet Fred Shaw is going to miss New Orleans restaurant life · Dimitry Elias Léger’s coronavirus diary reveals the importance of the World Healthy Organization · The most borrowed books in NYC during quarantine. | Lit Hub
• Why do we swim? Bonnie Tsui on what it means to confront the open water. | Lit Hub
• “If we cannot teach fearlessness in the creative writing classroom what the hell else is there to teach?” Ru Freeman considers the relevance of the workshop. | Lit Hub Craft
• ON THE VBC: On Sheltering, Marissa Meltzer talks vintage workout videos, mainstream feminism, and learning peace • Chef Evan Hanczor and Miranda Popkey cook broth on Table of Contents Live. | Lit Hub
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and T Kira Madden discuss craft, candles, and character. | Lit Hub
• Ibtisam Barakat recommends books by five great Arab women writers. | Lit Hub
• “The Empire continues to run on autopilot, even as the Republic shelters in place.” Ryan Ruby on the invisible militarization of daily life in America. | Lit Hub Politics
• Parul Sehgal on Chekhov’s early stories, Annalisa Quinn on Mark O’Connell’s apocalypse journey, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Olivia Rutigliano rounds up all the long-running classic detective series you need to make it through quarantine. | CrimeReads
• “Has the virus started the Night of the Living Karens?” Jennifer Weiner on the seductive appeal of pandemic shaming. | The New York Times
• “How fragile and rare our ordered structures are, our fictions, and how precious.” Charles Yu on the illusions the pandemic has shattered. | The Atlantic
• Alex Trebek’s memoir, The Answer Is…, will be released in July. | The Hollywood Reporter
• “We are also existing as our past selves and those past selves do carry trauma that we left unprocessed.” Jake Skeets on memory, navigating time, and putting land at the center of poetics. | Hayden’s Ferry Review
• “We can’t figure out how long we’ve been mostly inside. We think two weeks, although that feels inexact.” Kathryn Scanlan and Kate Zambreno discuss stillness and home. | Granta
• Read “The Female Gays,” a new short story by Ali Smith. | Five Dial
• Oops. Visit Britain, Great Britain’s official tourist site, was under fire for posting a colorful literary map of “British literature” that featured English authors almost exclusively. | The National

Also on Lit Hub: Can you bring a tiny robot into an exclusive Austrian sanatorium? Frédéric Beigbeder on life among the immortality-seekers • Read an excerpt from Carmen Boullosa’s newly-translated novel The Book of Anna (trans. by Samantha Schnee)