Lit Hub Daily: August 15, 2023

• Matthew Teague on the indictment in Georgia: “The indictment describes an effort that was many things: wide-ranging, sordid, chaotic, and dangerous.” | Lit Hub Politics

• “Race is the very motor of this play.” Farah Karim-Cooper considers how performances of Othello can spotlight white supremacy. | Lit Hub Theater

• 26 new books for the dog days of summer. | The Hub

• “There is much that I’m ashamed of, a seeming universe of it, and yet I’ve always been grateful to be an alcoholic.” Ed Simon on drinking, original sin, and Paradise Lost. | Lit Hub Criticism

• David Shih reflects on reading and writing like an Asian American. | Lit Hub

• “There is no way to determine the influence of a book.” Garret Keizer considers the book banners. | The New York Times

• Derek Owusu writes about the fallout from being named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. | GQ

• “Middle age isn’t something you can prepare for adequately. You have to figure out how to move through it intuitively and you have to endure it.” Diane Mehta on the freedom of learning to swim in her 50s. | The Guardian

• A Washington library is in danger of closing over a dispute about what books are on its shelves. | The Seattle Times

• A school district in Iowa is using ChatGPT to help ban library books. | Popular Science

• “In Rose’s view, nobody is innocent, and the work of mourning is never completed.” Parul Sehgal on Jacqueline Rose. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub: What Elizabeth Rush saw of motherhood and climate in Antarctica • How to capture the emotional center of a novel • Read from Paul Murray’s latest novel, The Bee Sting