Lit Hub Daily: February 2, 2021

• “I so very much hoped that we still had our own flavor of telepathy, he and I.” Susan Conley considers the relationship between mothers and teenage sons after her son’s traumatic injury. | Lit Hub
• Paisley Rekdal has some advice for new graduates: read everything, and teach yourself the “fine art of self-belief.” | Lit Hub
• An Tran on the fake translation shaking up the Buddhist Anglosphere. | Lit Hub
• “If life does not offer up any theories about itself, why should the person who is looking at a life?” Sheila Heti on the preoccupations of Richard Wollheim’s Germs. | Lit Hub
• Heather Cleary recommends some brilliant books in translation… about translators! | Book Marks
• Anna Malaika Tubbs reflects on the mothers of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King Jr., and where we might be without their work. | Lit Hub
• On Donald Barthelme’s bourbon-related writing advice and other
  lessons Chang-rae Lee has learned about the writing life. | Lit Hub
• Sarah Pearse recommends five favorite frozen mysteries and thrillers, perfect for a snow day. | CrimeReads
• “During one thorny patch of my own intimate life, I found myself having passages quoted to me by two different women.” Alison Bechdel on the love letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. | The Guardian
• Should men be reading more erotica? | Inside Hook
• How do you market a book in a pandemic? Six debut novelists discuss the challenges of releasing new work in 2021. | Forbes
• “That’s kind of the whole point of Appearances—to perform a version of my parents who suck in ways that my real parents may not actually suck.” Sharon Mashihi talks with Emily Gould about her metafictional podcast. | Vulture
• “In prison you don’t find yourself or come to understand yourself. Instead, you beat yourself up for every choice that brought you to where you are today.” Ahmed Naji on reading and writing in an Egyptian prison. | The Believer
• Do we need a 21st-century federal writers’ project? Jason Boog makes the case. | Full Stop
• Inside the world of pop futurist books, which “offer clues about where the future is heading, no matter how muddled the present looks.” | The Atlantic

Also on Lit Hub: Gabrielle Korn talks to Jeanna Kadlec about the toxicity of “perfection” in women’s media • Gabriel Kruis’ poem, “The Rattler” • Read from Rebecca Sacks’ City of a Thousand Gates