Lit Hub Daily: July 9, 2019

• 2019 is half over, but there are so many highly anticipated books still to come! | Lit Hub
• “When we try to wrest clear meaning out of the abyss of brutality, we are refusing to imagine the real.” Madeline ffitch on the problem of neoliberal realism in contemporary fiction. | Lit Hub
• “What remains from the love affair is a remarkable gift: a trove of poems written to and about her lover.” Irene Goldman-Price on Edith Wharton’s little-known poetry of love and regret. | Lit Hub
• Courtney Maum, Rawi Hage, and more take the Lit Hub Questionnaire. | Lit Hub
• Read a poem by Nick Laird, from his collection Feel Free. | Lit Hub
• Adrian McKinty on persistence, morality, and the late-night phone call that changed the course of his career. | CrimeReads
• Inside the giant, artistic tribute to Maya Angelou on the grounds of the LA high school that bears her name. | The New York Times
• “Remembering those things, I would ask myself, Why am I so angry?” Stop what you’re doing and read this new novella by Mary Gaitskill. | The New Yorker
• Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota have planned a six-hour work stoppage on the first day of Prime Day, the company’s summer sale event. | Bloomberg
• “Spain is not so much a muse as it is a bittersweet fatherland, the empire that forced Catholicism, the Spanish language and its surnames on the Americas through its colonial rule.” On the literature of Spain. | LA Times
• Yet another reason booksellers are great: #BookstoresAgainstBorders, the fundraising campaign spearheaded by the co-owner of A Room of One’s Own and benefitting RAICES, has raised almost $30,000 since its launch last week. | Publishers Weekly
• What do Greek comedies, Elizabethan tragicomedies, and contemporary lifestyle books have in common? Quite a few are what some are calling “fail lit”, or the literature of failure (and trying to get back up). | BBC
• “She stares at the woman, and the woman stares at her”: A profile of Helen Phillips, whose latest novel, about the primal horrors of motherhood, was shaped by personal tragedy and success. | Vulture

Also on Lit Hub: Randy Boyagoda on how fiction fuses the incompatible realities of religion and comedy • Falling for a statue of Hermes in Athens • Read a story from James Alan McPherson’s collection “Hue and Cry.”