Lit Hub Daily: July 8, 2021

TODAY: In 1902, writer and artist Gwendolyn B. Bennett is born.   

• From Shakespeare to Lovecraft to Stephen King, Austin Ratner tours the prodigious literature of rats (and the origins of his name). | Lit Hub Criticism

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• “I am very aware that my house was once, and in many ways still is, someone else’s.” Emily Austin ponders grief and what the dead leave behind. | Lit Hub

• Indie booksellers recommend the best from indie presses this July. | Lit Hub

• Judy Scott recalls an intense summer in 1970s Hydra with Leonard Cohen and his muse/girlfriend, Marianne Ihlen. | Lit Hub Memoir

• When lending your friend money works out, or, when Franklin Pierce saved Nathaniel Hawthorne from financial ruin. | Lit Hub History

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• Ewa Majewska asks, can small-scale organizing solve global problems? | Lit Hub

• When it came to the AIDS epidemic, writes Emily Bass, “Black Americans simply didn’t prompt the same sympathy and call for mercy from the Bush White House as African epidemics of the same scale.” | Lit Hub Politics

• WATCH: Kyle Whyte and Jay Griffiths discuss Indigenous cultures and climate change. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• Rob Doyle on Quentin Tarantino’s debut novel, Mark O’Connell on Nathaniel Rich’s vision of a world remade, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• “They only know art as a mirror, never as a doorway.” Lincoln Michel considers bad-faith criticism and the power of messy, ambiguous art. | Countercraft

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• Jonathan Lee explains the research process behind his new historical fiction novel. | Interview Magazine

• Rodrigo Garcia discusses his new memoir and the death of his father, Gabriel García Márquez. | Los Angeles Times

• Anne Theroux, ex-wife of Paul Theroux, shares the realities of being the spouse of a famous writer. | The Guardian

• William di Canzio reflects on E.M. Forster’s Alec and his own “instinct that there was more of the story to tell.” | Full Stop

• Meet 17-year-old author Dara McAnulty, who has garnered acclaim “for work that is brimming with his passion as well as open about his autism.” | The New York Times

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• “This is what falling in love with blackness looks like. It’s messy. It’s angry. It’s silly. It’s beautiful. It’s sad.” Namwali Serpell on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and “the process of becoming black.” | NPR

Also on Lit Hub: Lucy Jane Santos on radium, the most dangerous skincare ingredient of the early 20th century • What to do when your short story wants to be a novel • Read from Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett’s debut novel, The Very Nice Box 

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