Lit Hub Daily: July 12, 2021

• “I said, ‘Oh, all right, but I’m not singing.’” Read an oral history of the epically terrible Star Wars holiday special (which obviously achieved cult status after George Lucas tried to bury it). | Lit Hub Film

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• Why Joyce Maynard’s new novel—the story of a writer-artist couple who fall in love, then fall apart—will sound familiar to readers of her nonfiction. | Lit Hub

• “Heresy allows a writer to write freely, for writing to be an act of joy.” Richard Flanagan against the literature of silence. | Lit Hub

• Dispatches from a microlanguage: Thora Hjörleifsdóttir on the art of thriving in Icelandic. | Lit Hub

• Carrot Quinn considers the lived reality of traveling the country by freight train. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Megha Majumdar recommends books that have made a personal impact. | Elle

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• Looking to break into the publishing industry? Zakiya Dalila Harris shares her tips. | Parade

• “I sat back down and realized there was page after page of evidence that the federal government played a huge role in shaping the comic book industry during World War Two.” Dr. Paul S. Hirsch on the research process behind his new book and the history of comic book publishing. | Chicago Review of Books

• Why are so many men reluctant to read books by women? MA Sieghart investigates. | The Guardian

• Read the earliest known surviving letter written by Shirley Jackson (when she was 21 years old). | The Paris Review

• “No one is ever going to take care of you.” Susan Orlean gets real about the business side of being a writer. | Medium

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• Barbara Newman considers the “medieval otherness” of Dante. | London Review of Books

Also on Lit Hub: Elizabeth Greenwood on the people who seek relationships with the incarcerated • Emil’ Keme on colonization’s failure to challenge Indigenous Maya spirituality • Read a story from María Ospina’s newly translated collection, Variations on the Body (tr. Heather Cleary)