Lit Hub Daily: August 23, 2021

• “It was the only time that I was glad to be on speakerphone, because each time my students read aloud from ‘Gold Coast,’ I began to cry.” Francine Prose on teaching James Alan McPherson to incarcerated students. | Lit Hub

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• Robert Frost’s maple, Ross Gay’s peach, Valeria Luiselli’s orange, and more of the most memorable trees in literature. | Lit Hub Nature

• “Because he reads, he knows more than he wants to, and he knows it too well to forget it.” Heather Cass White on the crime and punishment of literacy in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Misunderstanding Thoreau: Steve Edwards considers what we miss when we approach literature—and life—through a neurotypical lens. | Lit Hub

• “There is something going on in the Spanish language and it’s thrilling.” Meet Granta’s next generation of important Spanish novelists. | Lit Hub

• Friends and colleagues remember the late writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. | Lit Hub

• White Noise, The Sellout, Middlemarch, and more rapid-fire book recs from Kerri Arsenault. | Book Marks

• Max Ableson reveals the best place on the internet: the comments section of the Internet Archive’s Grateful Dead collection. | n+1

• “Does poetry allow us to reach out to our dead?” On poems as intimate conversations with the ones gone before. | Public Books

• Leïla Slimani considers her research process, the role of nostalgia, and Moroccan history. | The Cut

• Diane Williams discusses her forthcoming short story collection and the pursuit of pleasure. | The Millions

• Domenic Cregan looks back on Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 short story cycle, Winesburg, Ohio, which features “moments of Joycean epiphany and likely-unintentional meta-fiction.” | The Cleveland Review of Books

• Matthew Spektor reflects on creating a portrait of Los Angeles and the “writers, actors, directors, and musicians who straddle the line between success and anonymity.” | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Jill Murphy, the children’s book author known and loved for the Worst Witch novels, has died at 72. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: Louis Edwards on his literary comeback and music’s undeniable influence • Merissa Nathan Gerson considers coping with the unexpected death of a parent • Read from Lou Mathews’ latest novel, Shaky Town