Lit Hub Daily: July 13, 2022

• How Josephine Baker transformed from dancer to spy. | Lit Hub History

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• “Although they’d been dead for 30 years, I was writing their story in a taut, blow-by-blow replay as the noose of Jones’s madness pulled tighter and tighter.” Julia Scheeres on the harrowing experience of writing about the Jonestown Massacre. | Lit Hub Memoir

• A whole new world: Why culture shock can be a powerful tool for science fiction and fantasy storytellers. | Lit Hub Craft

• “Anything can happen in a bar.” Natalka Burian’s reading list of fictional bars, bartenders, and bar flies. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• What Chris Belcher is reading now and next, from Emergent Strategy to I Love Dick. | Lit Hub

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• Ann Aptaker looks at what famous crime stories and films borrow from the theater. | CrimeReads

• The Booker Prize has launched a book club challenge—and the prize is seats at this year’s shortlist ceremony. | The Guardian

• Wyatt Mason sits down with Akhil Sharma, the author who spent 4,000 hours revising his first novel, two decades later. | The New York Times Magazine

• Elif Batuman, Rebecca Solnit, and more writers respond to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. | London Review of Books

• “If we acknowledge sanctuary as an important dimension of theater’s history and not merely as a trending trope, where does it lead?” Benjamin Woodring on theater as safe harbor. | Public Books

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• Sarah Neilson lists some of the most noteworthy recent books by Indigenous authors. | Shondaland

• Amaris Castillo talks to journalists about their experiences with book projects and publishing. | Poynter

• Saikat Majumdar looks at the structure of creative writing education in the US, its implications for Indian students, and the “unanswered questions” that remain. | Los Angeles Review of Books

Also on Lit Hub: Ruby Tandoh on turning meals into memories • New poetry by Tony Hoagland • Read from Teddy Wayne’s latest novel, The Great Man Theory