Lit Hub Daily: July 14, 2021

• “All I can think of is some of my idiotic statements in 200 newspapers.” Shirley Jackson writes to her parents about navigating literary fame, alongside with its infamous companion: financial insecurity. | Lit Hub

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• Rae Nudson considers how makeup can strengthen the oppressed—like it did at Stonewall. | Lit Hub History

• It always comes back to stand-up: David Steinberg digs into the comedic success of Jerry Seinfeld. | Lit Hub

• Matt Bell recommends a reading list of speculative climate futures, featuring Octavia Butler, Rebecca Roanhorse, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Rather than turn inward in response to the refugee crisis, writes Jamie Mackay, Sicily ushered in a new era of Italian politics. | Lit Hub Politics

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• Katie Crouch suggests listening to your favorite song to figure out your novel’s plot (and shows her math with a CAKE single). | Lit Hub Craft

• Five books you might have missed in June, from fabulist stories to Cold War potboilers. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Killing and Dying, Nightbitch, Sweet Valley High, and more rapid-fire book recs from Kristen Radtke. | Book Marks

• A brief history of Edward Gorey’s hand-crafted toys, “a cast of creatures as strange and marvellous as children themselves.” | The New Yorker

• Kiese Laymon considers the challenges of writing about racism, what it means to practice self-care, and the meaning of love. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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• “Pleasure is no enemy of discipline.” On Virginia Woolf and the Idiosyncratic School of reading. | The Hedgehog Review

• Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks share a reading list for adults who grew up with The Baby-Sitters Club. | The Rumpus

• “What feels indispensable about poetry is its ability to let the reader, me, inhabit an imaginative space.” Kathleen Ossip on the possibility of poetry. | McSweeney’s

• Anjali Enjeti on the “routine” of writing with chronic pain. | Poets & Writers

• “Slowly, story after story, my tongue unfurled. I went from mute to voluble.” Igiaba Scego on attending school in Italy, and finding her voice through fiction (translated by Aaron Robertson). | Words Without Borders

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Also on Lit Hub: Chloe Shaw on learning grief and companionship from her childhood dog • A poem by Morgan Parker • Read from Luiz Ruffato’s newly translated novel, Late Summer (tr. Julia Sanches)