LitHub Daily: July 20, 2016

• On office life: Irina Reyn searches for meaning in the cubicles. | Literary Hub
• What it’s like to write crime fiction in the era of Black Lives Matter: a roundtable on race, bias, and gun control in America. | Literary Hub
• Reading and writing my way through the AIDS crisis: Matthew Cheney remembers the books that helped him survive. | Literary Hub
• What if I’m actually a character in a Larry McMurtry novel? On the beautiful losers of Texas, and returning to where you came from. | Literary Hub
• “’Conservative’ is not the right term for [David Cameron and Boris Johnson] anymore: that word has at least an implication of care and the preservation of legacy. ‘Arsonist’ feels like the more accurate term.” Zadie Smith on the Brexit. | NYRB
• “I’m not trying to prove anything, I’m just trying to find out what’s out there and what’s in here and if there’s much difference between the two.” An interview with Claire-Louise Bennett. | The Paris Review
• Joy Williams on the unknowable nature of human beings, the lack of happiness delivered by writing, and what short stories should specialize in. | VICE
• “When I hear the latest GOP platform language, I hear a death sentence.” Garrard Conley denounces the Republican National Committee’s suggested platform planks. | TIME
• Speaking with Danez Smith and Daveed Diggs at the 19th annual Brave New Voices festival about what poetry, and poets, can accomplish. | The Huffington Post
• “Reality is the scariest thing. I want to demonstrate that.” A short story by Ben Fama. | Joyland
• “We are at the edge of the madness,/sitting and swelling warm under the skin.” Three poems by Kwame Dawes. | Oxford American
• “Though I was certainly undergoing a period of spiritual questioning and doubt, the fuel for this departure was something much more earthy and earthly: beer.” Shawn Vestal on leaving Mormonism. | Catapult

Also on Literary Hub: How the mother of Dada made history of her life: images from Hannah Höch’s master work, Life Portrait · A phone call from Paul, part two: Nico Muhly on music as language and writers in Paris · After tragedy, turning to Dante: From Joseph Luzzi’s In A Dark Wood