Lit Hub Daily: April 6, 2022

• Douglas Stuart on the defiant spirit of Glasgow’s doocots (aka private pigeon lofts on public land), which “could only have sprung from the minds of the men of central Scotland.” | Lit Hub

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• “What else have you written, I asked. By which I meant: what other secrets do you have?” Aamina Ahmad on the hidden lives of writers and mothers. | Lit Hub

• Why you need an elevator pitch for your book (and how to write one). | Lit Hub

• Post-traumatic: Chantal V. Johnson recommends nine books that move beyond the trauma plot. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Gina Sorell on approaching serious topics with a lighter touch. | Lit Hub Humor

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• How the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone Collaborative is working to preserve protest art in the city. | Lit Hub Art

• Ellen O’Connell Whittet in praise of Shirley Hughes’s “quintessentially English” children’s stories. | Lit Hub

• Jennifer Natalya Fink traces America’s concepts of disability back to 20th-century German fascism. | Lit Hub History

• Pachinko, Leo Tolstoy, the sex scene in Sula, and more rapid-fire book recs from Morgan Jerkins. | Book Marks

• “There’s a rumor that martial law will be declared at sundown. He has to make it to his flight to DC before then. Then on to Korea.” Anton Hur considers the US in a speculative essay about leaving it. | Astra

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• Dodie Bellamy talks to Rhonda Feng about writing and grieving. | Public Books

• “For her, redeemability never determined whether a woman’s story was worth telling.” Leah Mensch on the life of the late writer Kate Braverman. | Guernica

• One hundred years before the creation of Wordle, crossword mania swept the nation. | Zócalo Public Square

• “I’m not scared of war any more… you just have to keep on living and do whatever you can in the circumstances.” Andrey Kurkov on life during the war in Ukraine. | The Guardian

• “When we’re tuned in and moving together and singing together, I feel a kind of connectivity where ego is not that important.” zavé martohardjono answers questions about community and making art with a collective model. | BOMB

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• Laura Sackton writes a love letter to keeping a commonplace book, a habit that “has made me slow down.” | Book Riot

Also on Lit Hub: Can a machine tell us who to love? • A poem by Akwaeke Emezi • Read from Antonio Scurati’s newly translated novel, M: Son of the Century (tr. Anne Milano Appel)