LitHub Daily: July 26, 2016

TODAY: In 1856, Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw is born. 

• What should fiction do? Bonnie Nazdam on the limits of cinematic storytelling. | Literary Hub
• Lori Jakiela remembers the worst book signing ever. | Literary Hub
• The untold story of a legendary Diane Arbus photograph. | Literary Hub
• A hot day in Philly: Timothy Denevi encounters Bernie Bros, Trump Thugs, and possibly heat stroke. | Literary Hub
• “The poor girl. She’s about to burn her life to the ground and she doesn’t even know it.” A short story by Joshua Ferris. | The New Yorker
• Annie DeWitt on the reality of being a writer, receiving advice from psychic friends, and making use of the unsaid. | The Believer Logger
• “I didn’t want to be another woman who interrogated her sexuality as soon as his lips touched hers. I didn’t want to be another anything.” Blair Braverman on falling in love with a trans person. | BuzzFeed News
• A petition demanding the restoration of Dennis Cooper’s blog after Google deleted it last month has been launched. | Change.org, The New Yorker
• “The controls on travellers have been strengthened, and many who came to Hong Kong to buy books censored in mainland China have stopped buying them, as they may get into trouble at the border.” A report from the Hong Kong book fair in the aftermath of the disappearances of five booksellers last year. | The Guardian
• James Schamus on adapting Philip Roth for the screen and the inspiration he drew from Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath. | Signature Reads
• “Most librarians get into it because they like working with people and helping people, and I think that fosters the sense of community and collaboration.” Speaking with a modern-day librarian about how the profession has changed. | The Atlantic
• “Howls unheeded. Lodestars of pain. These things are forever.” What the email correspondence of Natalie Portman and Cormac McCarthy might look like, if it existed. | The Millions

Also on Literary Hub: Megan Abbott on five books in her life · Books making news this week: suspense, sci-fi, and single parents · I’m a 26-year-old virgin: from Emma Rathbone’s Losing It

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