Lit Hub Daily: July 8, 2022

• Andrew Keen asks if there’s a model for political change in 21st-century America. | Lit Hub Politics

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• “You have to excise the preciousness from within yourself, that vision of yourself as a great and important author, before you can write freely in your own voice.” Michael Bourne on killing all your darlings. | Lit Hub Craft

• Unearthing the story of Mars by counting its craters. | Lit Hub Space!

• “Ask yourself if this year was the hardest school year teachers have ever faced, or was that last year? Or 2020?” How to close a high school library for summer vacation (in 2022). | Lit Hub

• 13 indie booksellers on what you should read this summer. | Lit Hub

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• Musings on Jane Eyre, criminal mothers, and Victorian childhoods. | Lit Hub

• Rachel Careau on the equally daunting tasks of translating the “self-evidently literary” Roger Lewinter and the “unfussy” Colette. | Lit Hub On Translation

• Sopan Deb recommends writing tips gleaned from improv. | Lit Hub Craft

• Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez, Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball, and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• L. Blanchard with five books set in speculative worlds. | CrimeReads

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• Lydia Millet on discovering the Rocky Horror novel as a kid: “Even now, when Tim Curry pops up in some small role in a newer movie, I can’t help wishing I could slap that thick, extravagant makeup right back on him.” | The Millions

• “Every trans woman I ever met is an artist of her own life.” McKenzie Wark on the writing of trans stories. | The Nation

• Sterling Cunio recounts the process of writing and staging a play while incarcerated. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Tobias Carroll recommends new books in translation from Kazakhstan, Mexico, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and Cameroon. | Words Without Borders

• Tim Parks considers the work of the translator after the author’s death. | NYRB

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• “Explosion is one way to think about what can happen to books. Contagion is another. But I often think about it in other terms: as a process of composting.” Elvia Wilk on the perils of world-building. | n+1

• Michele Saunders recounts a summer with James Baldwin in the South of France. | Document

Also on Lit Hub: Who is Fire Island for? • Eight books that’ll help you ask braver questions of yourself • Read from Bolu Babalola’s latest novel, Honey & Spice