Lit Hub Daily: July 31, 2020

• “Trump’s refusal to accept defeat is not possible or even probable—it is all but inevitable.” Lawrence Douglas on the crisis that looms in November. | Lit Hub Politics
• Omar Mouallem’s pandemic project? Becoming the fake dean of a fake university. | Lit Hub
• “Confession: I still cry at work. I’m not just talking about a single tear either, or the slight watery eye after a heroic story in a segment.” If it’s good enough for Al Roker… | Lit Hub Memoir
• Nick Ripatrazone talks to English teacher Conor O’Sullivan about helping students find their voices in theater. | Lit Hub
• In this month’s Astrology Book Club, everything is in retrograde except reading. | Lit Hub
• “This New Year.” A poem by Yusef Komunyakaa. | Lit Hub Poetry
• ON THE VBC: On Joining Conversation, Erika Wurth talks to Ted Van Alst, Cherie Dimaline, Adrian Jawort, Katherena Vermette, and David Treuer for part three of a roundtable on contemporary Native writing • Sari Botton interviews Laura Lippman on Personal Space: The Memoir Show. | Lit Hub
• New titles from Zadie Smith, Laura van den Berg, Yiyun Li, and Natasha Trethewey all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• To discover noir’s anti-racist potential, Alaya Dawn Johnson had to wrestle with its racist classics. | CrimeReads
• Brick-and-mortar bookstore sales may be down, but overall, sales of print books in the US are up from this time last year. | Jane Friedman
• When culling your book collection turns out to create more problems than it solves. | The Washington Post
• Buñuelos de leche, anyone? The University of Texas at San Antonio is releasing some of its digitized historic Mexican cookbooks as a series of free ebooks. | Atlas Obscura
• “He was patient with his characters, with himself, and kind to everyone else in the process.” M.O. Walsh remembers Brad Watson. | The Paris Review
• Agents are protesting over a partial refund for canceled booths at the London Book Fair. | Publishers Weekly
• William Wordsworth’s Somerset home will be turned into a Buddhist retreat site. | Somerset County Gazette
• A handy, illustrated timeline of the mass manufacturing of books. | Lapham’s Quarterly

Also on Lit Hub:“A New Day Dawns”: A poem by Nikky Finney • When your novel’s heroine is more successful in the publishing world than you • Read an excerpt from Molly Aitken’s novel The Island Child.