Lit Hub Daily: July 28, 2021

TODAY: In 1965, Edogawa Ranpo, Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction, dies at 70.  

• “Before I arrived in the US, I thought that racism meant that people hated you. I didn’t realize that it could also mean disinterest.” Amanda Choo Quan considers the effects of racism and anxiety on one’s writing life. | Lit Hub

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• Too sunny for the counterculture, too sour for the suburbs: Matthew Specktor on Tuesday Weld’s perplexingly unsuccessful acting career. | Lit Hub Film

• The best book covers of July will have you seeing red (in a good way). | Lit Hub

• There’s no such thing as too many dogs: Dinah Lenney talks to Chloe Shaw about her debut memoir. | Lit Hub

• John V. Petrocelli on the difference between conspiracy theorists and bullshitters—and why both are dangerous. | Lit Hub

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• Read the winners of this year’s prize for incarcerated writers in Texas, “Bottles of Grief” and “The Myth of Me,” selected by Mitchell S. Jackson. | Lit Hub

• Winifred Gallagher traces a workforce revolution: when women went West. | Lit Hub History

• Melinda Wenner Moyer on how to raise kids who don’t suck. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• Brad Parks asks, where are the stay-at-home dads of fiction? | CrimeReads

• Life After Life; The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; Yellow Wife; and more rapid-fire book recs from Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. | Book Marks

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• Real estate, secrecy, and books: How activists restored democracy to the New York Public Library. | The Nation

• Cath Pound revisits Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas on the 75th anniversary of her death. | BBC Culture

• Elizabeth Ellen talks about longevity, fearlessness, and books about “difficult women.” | The Rumpus

• On the creativity and enduring legacy of Eric Carle. | The New York Times

• “Those little girls will not forget / The day little Hattie died.” Perri Klass on the bygone tradition of (truly terrible) obituary poems. | The Hudson Review

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• “I don’t think that anyone has to have a particularly interesting life, or a particularly crazy story in order to write an essay.” Larissa Pham discusses how to sustain a writing life. | The Creative Independent

• Virginie Despentes recounts the experience of her generation of writers in France, who “didn’t think of fame, even less of having money.” | LARB

Also on Lit Hub: How I learned to stop worrying and love my book piles • The underappreciated art (and hard work) of making snow • Read a story from Alix Ohlin’s latest collection, We Want What We Want 

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