Lit Hub Daily: August 26, 2020

TODAY: In 1914, Julio Cortázar is born.

• “We have always been here, beneath the surface of American poetic consciousness.” Joy Harjo on the diverse, groundbreaking world of Indigenous poetry. | Lit Hub Poetry
• It’s that time of year: Emily Temple considers the new generation of great campus novels. | Lit Hub
• WATCH: Singer-songwriter Devon Gilfillian recommends his favorite books on writing and treats us to performances of his new single, “The Good Life.” | Lit Hub Music
• On the opioid crisis and the grief of Ohio: David Giffels considers rural addiction and the need for a multitude of voices. | Lit Hub Politics
• “I hope this book helps expand the outer limits of Blackness and help other Black weirdos accept themselves.” Mensah Demary talks to Chris L. Terry about his novel Black Card. | Lit Hub
• The history of Latin America is far from monolithic: Enrique Krauze on Peruvian historian Marie Arana. | Lit Hub History
• Mike Soto defines the Narco Acid Western, the anti-Western genre set in America’s surreal borderlands. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Diana Giovinazzo on the radical politics of Anita Garibaldi, the wife of “Italy’s George Washington.” | Lit Hub History
• Helen Macdonald talks Sherlock Holmes, Ursula Le Guin, and hating On the Road in the Book Marks Questionnaire. | Book Marks
• A month of literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of August. | Book Marks
• Michael Laurence recommends eight dark thrillers with even darker protagonists. | CrimeReads
• The founders of the nonprofit Liberation Library, which sends books to incarcerated youth in Illinois, discuss censorship, prison abolition, and the right to access books. | Vogue
• “Trump is, in many ways, the perfect Hiaasen character: a rich, vain, racist, twice-divorced Palm Beach resident with a penchant for affairs with porn stars.” On Carl Hiassen’s (actually good) Trump novel. | The New Republic
• “Swift’s and Sade’s literature was neither the literature of majestic vision nor of pure shock.” On Jonathan Swift, the Marquis de Sade, and the art of upsetting people. | Lapham’s Quarterly
• Gail Sheehy, one of New York Magazine’s star journalists in the 1960s and ‘70s, and the author of 17 books, has died at 83. | The New York Times
• After many years of neglect, the Greek Ministry of Culture plans to restore the Athens home of Kostis Palamas, one of Greece’s most famous poets. | Greek Reporter
• Tracy Clark, Kellye Garrett, and others discuss the long fight to amplify the voices of Black women writers. | Chicago Tribune
• Kuwait, which has banned thousands of books in recent years, is scaling back its censorship laws. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: Was The Graduate inspired by a Brontë family scandal? • Jason Diamond on the sprawl of suburban culture • Read an excerpt from Akwaeke Emezi’s new novel, The Death of Vivek Oji.

 

---