Lit Hub Daily: August 1, 2022

• “I am not ashamed to take what joy I can in writing, it is neither a little joy nor a small solace, it is enormous.” Read Mary Ruefle’s commencement address to the Bennington Writing Seminars. | Lit Hub

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• What conventional wisdom gets wrong about cancer. | Lit Hub Science

• Jenny Bhatt considers Dhumketu’s pioneering short stories and the politics of translation—“a disruptive intervention and glorious revival.” | Lit Hub

• Aimee Bender on stones as secret-keepers, in literature and in life. | Lit Hub

• Ella Risbridger muses on the pain-writing-money trifecta, Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, and memoir as fiction. | Lit Hub

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• “I don’t think I have got my head round the import of what is going on. Yet I do know that this war has a significance beyond most stories I’ve reported.” Lindsey Hilsum shares her letters home from Ukraine during the first weeks of the invasion. | Granta

• A look at how The Master and Margarita “emerged intact from the calamitous flame of Soviet censorship.” | JSTOR Daily

• Joe Pompeo examines what’s at stake in the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Penguin Random House. | Vanity Fair

• 20 queer books coming out later this year. | Book Riot

• Michael Pollan talks about researching caffeine, opium, and psychedelic drugs for his work. | Oregon Public Broadcasting

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• “I have always viewed writing fiction as moral work, but never before had it felt so urgent.” Akhil Sharma on revising his first published novel. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: To write fiction with a psychotherapist’s mind • Read “Ninth Sign of Zodiac,” a poem by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko • Read from Juan José Millás’ newly translated novel, Let No One Sleep (tr. Thomas Bunstead)