Lit Hub Daily: February 8, 2021

• Lisa Zeidner on the ménage a trois of every reading experience—i.e., the relationship between the reader, author, and character—because yes, craft can be sexy. | Lit Hub Craft
• David Duchovny starts writing at 4:30 am, and other ways the multihyphenate, four-time author puts us to shame. | Lit Hub
• Urvi Kumbhat reflects on the mango, which “rests uneasily between symbol and sumptuous fruit, especially in diasporic literature.” | Lit Hub
• “Still, the best, most generative conversations mostly happen out of the public eye.” Copper Nickel editor Wayne Miller on when poetry social media goes wrong—and when it goes right. | Lit Hub Poetry
• Last March, Clemmie Jackson-Stops launched Lockdown Libraries, a bibliotherapeutic subscription service (and dream job?). | Lit Hub
• “Sidi and his bees brought me closer to a parent whose native tongue and culture differs from mine, and for a time, to that sometimes elusive place we call ‘home.’” Lara Vergnaud on what she gained by translating Yamen Manai’s The Ardent Swarm. | Lit Hub Translation
• Amelia Pang on the SOS letters smuggled out of forced-labor camps in China, that made their way around the world. | Lit Hub
• Outlander, Lonesome Dove, Calvin and Hobbes, and more rapid-fire book recs from Ariel Lawhon. | Book Marks
• On the legacy of Betty Freidan’s powerful, flawed book, The Feminine Mystique. | Smithsonian Magazine
• “I can’t hit the page without all of them, all the pages and pages of Black men I could mention here that whispered or screamed in my ear with the same desire to live honestly free.” Tyehimba Jess on the ancestral wealth of the Black masculine. | Boston Review
• Mark O’Connell goes inside the mind of “managerial Mephistopheles” Jeff Bezos (enter at your own risk). | The Guardian
• The Barack Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, Chicago is set to begin construction later this year. | Book Riot
• “Books can help us counter negative messages and provide empowering ones.” Sonja Cherry-Paul on the importance of books that center Black joy. | Chalkbeat

Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual book events, featuring Ben Okri, Randa Jarrar, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and more • Alex Dimitrov’s poem, “New York” • Read from Anakana Schofield’s new novel, Bina