Lit Hub Daily: July 2, 2021

• If “national characteristics don’t create national unity,” asks George Packer, what could? | Lit Hub Politics

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• “I feel a defiance to those who would have me disappear.” Anita Sethi reclaims her existence in the wake of racial trauma. | Lit Hub

• Theodore R. Johnson considers the threat that racism poses to America, and the nation’s unofficial motto that “it’ll all work out somehow.” | Lit Hub Politics

• When disability rights activists and the Black Panthers took over a San Francisco government building—for 25 days. | Lit Hub History

• “Suppose you were a seal. The last thing you’d want to do after a hard day at the circus is watch another poor seal doing precisely the same thing.” Will Self on the pain of reading contemporary books as a contemporary writer. | Lit Hub

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• How to create “geographic complexity” in fiction—rather than falling back on regional clichés. | Lit Hub Craft

• Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl, Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals, and Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the June. | Book Marks

• “I was writing it from an uncomfortable place and, in a way, for myself.” Matt Haig talks about his new book, mental health, and imposter syndrome. | The Guardian

• How do we learn to live in a changed climate? Tyler J. Kelley unpacks the reality of climate change, his fascination with rivers, and the future of American infrastructure. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• “For Berryman that between, that vast interregnum between love and death, was the problem.” Nathan Knapp considers The Dream Songs. | The Point

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• Lincoln Center has named Mahogany L. Browne its first ever poet in residence. | New York Times

• Unpacking the history and politics of wuxia, a genre about martial arts heroes in an alternate ancient China. | Tor

• Against absolutism: Tabitha Blankenbiller on letting go of the impossible ideals of the “writer’s life.” | Catapult

• “Be bad! Let your first drafts be trash.” Taylor Jenkins Reid shares the techniques that help her write. | Interview Magazine

• Jasmine Guillory names the books that have changed her life, from childhood onward. | Entertainment Weekly

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Also on Lit Hub: A brief history of beloved comic Captain America • What to read this month, based on your astrological sign • Read from Brecht Evens’s latest graphic novel, The City of Belgium