Lit Hub Daily: April 11, 2022

TODAY: In 1987, Primo Levi, chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor, dies at 67. His work The Periodic Table (1975) was called the best science book ever written by the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

• “While Plath herself is not actually able to rise up out of the ash, her poems do.” Sina Queyras considers “Lady Lazarus.” | Lit Hub Poetry

• Lessons from the Cartoon Lounge: Jake Goldwasser recounts his creative stumbling blocks on his way to The New Yorker. | Lit Hub Cartoons

• Kenton Rambsy recommends 10 essential African American literary anthologies that span 100 years. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “It’s very much about baiting the hook, and then waiting.” Sven Birkerts on discovering the story you need to write. | Lit Hub

• Madhushree Ghosh talks to Anjali Enjeti about food as survival. | Lit Hub Food

• Introducing Shelf Talkers, a new series in which indie booksellers around the country share their favorite reads of the moment. First up, the staff at East Nashville’s The Bookshop. | Lit Hub

• Jonathan Galassi recommends books about the complications of school-age desire. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Ursula K. Le Guin, Tove Jansson, Ottessa Moshfegh, and more rapid-fire book recs from Jeff VanderMeer. | Book Marks

• “How do you tell your child, a hopeful reader and listener, that the landscape she loves will look vastly different by the time she grows up?” Belle Boggs on parenting, climate anxiety, and Sandra Boynton. | Ecotone

• Thirty years after the LA Rebellion, Kiese Laymon considers the burden of bearing witness. | Harper’s Bazaar

• Ari Brostoff talks to Natasha Lennard about their debut essay collection, Missing Time, which explores territory including Jewishness, feminism, and The X-Files. | The Nation

• What’s the deal with people who furnish their homes with books they don’t intend to read? | The Guardian

• GD Dess looks at the legacy of postmodernism and how “the arts in the United States became nothing more than extensions of the capitalist system.” | LARB

• “What matters to me is making sure these stories don’t get run out of existence just because the political flavor of the week is to create challenges where there aren’t any.” Leah Johnson on telling Black, queer stories. | Indy Star

• Spoiler alert: We’re having the wrong conversation about spoilers. | Vox

Also on Lit Hub: Behind the scenes of ACT UP’s groundbreaking “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” campaign • Why we should care about saving coral reefs • Read from Katya Kazbek’s debut novel, Little Foxes Took Up Matches

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