Lit Hub Daily: July 31, 2020
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 2012, Gore Vidal dies.
- “Trump’s refusal to accept defeat is not possible or even probable—it is all but inevitable.” Lawrence Douglas on the crisis that looms in November. | Lit Hub Politics
- Omar Mouallem’s pandemic project? Becoming the fake dean of a fake university. | Lit Hub
- “Confession: I still cry at work. I’m not just talking about a single tear either, or the slight watery eye after a heroic story in a segment.” If it’s good enough for Al Roker… | Lit Hub Memoir
- Nick Ripatrazone talks to English teacher Conor O’Sullivan about helping students find their voices in theater. | Lit Hub
- In this month’s Astrology Book Club, everything is in retrograde except reading. | Lit Hub
- “This New Year.” A poem by Yusef Komunyakaa. | Lit Hub Poetry
- ON THE VBC: On Joining Conversation, Erika Wurth talks to Ted Van Alst, Cherie Dimaline, Adrian Jawort, Katherena Vermette, and David Treuer for part three of a roundtable on contemporary Native writing • Sari Botton interviews Laura Lippman on Personal Space: The Memoir Show. | Lit Hub
- New titles from Zadie Smith, Laura van den Berg, Yiyun Li, and Natasha Trethewey all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- To discover noir’s anti-racist potential, Alaya Dawn Johnson had to wrestle with its racist classics. | CrimeReads
- Brick-and-mortar bookstore sales may be down, but overall, sales of print books in the US are up from this time last year. | Jane Friedman
- When culling your book collection turns out to create more problems than it solves. | The Washington Post
- Buñuelos de leche, anyone? The University of Texas at San Antonio is releasing some of its digitized historic Mexican cookbooks as a series of free ebooks. | Atlas Obscura
- “He was patient with his characters, with himself, and kind to everyone else in the process.” M.O. Walsh remembers Brad Watson. | The Paris Review
- Agents are protesting over a partial refund for canceled booths at the London Book Fair. | Publishers Weekly
- William Wordsworth’s Somerset home will be turned into a Buddhist retreat site. | Somerset County Gazette
- A handy, illustrated timeline of the mass manufacturing of books. | Lapham’s Quarterly
Also on Lit Hub:“A New Day Dawns”: A poem by Nikky Finney • When your novel’s heroine is more successful in the publishing world than you • Read an excerpt from Molly Aitken’s novel The Island Child.
Article continues after advertisement
Lit Hub Daily
The best of the literary Internet, every day, brought to you by Literary Hub.


