Lit Hub Daily: June 1, 2021

• “Give readers adequate room to breathe if you’re giving them air they’ve never breathed,” and other excellent writing advice from Kiese Laymon. | Lit Hub

  Article continues after advertisement

• “Then the devastating Tulsa Disaster burst upon us, blowing to atoms ideas and ideals no less than mere material evidence of our civilization.” Read Mary E. Jones Parrish’s account of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. | Lit Hub History

• Your week in virtual book events, including the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards and the Roxbury Poetry Festival. | Lit Hub

• Francisco Goldman talks to Rachel Kushner about autofiction, identity, and The Novel. | Lit Hub

• Why is everyone raising chickens? Gina G. Warren traces the history of the backyard bird. | Lit Hub

  Article continues after advertisement

• Kate Zambreno for boundary-pushing Aquarians, Nghi Vo for fantastical Pisces, and more book recommendations based on your astrology sign. | Lit Hub

• Simon Sebag Montefiore considers great orators throughout history, from Cromwell calling English Parliamentarians “ye pack of mercenary wretches” to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s thoughts on feminism. | Lit Hub

• Our obsession with time comes as no surprise: Byron Reese and Scott Hoffman on the concept of “wasted time.” | Lit Hub

• The Bluest Eye, Lost in the City, All the Pretty Horses, and more rapid-fire book recs from Marie-Helene Bertino. | Book Marks

• Catch up with the Hay Festival: watch these conversations between Ethan Hawke and David Mitchell,  and Patricia Lockwood and Nina Stibbe. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

  Article continues after advertisement

• Cannibal nuns, fairytale mashups, and Aztec goddesses all feature among June’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy. | Book Marks

• “What I didn’t fully expect was the abiding and overwhelmingly white silence many Asian people have encountered from even would-be allies.” R.O. Kwon addresses the white bystanders to anti-Asian violence. | Vanity Fair

• Today in News That Should Terrify Us All: Amazon is ramping up efforts to “disrupt” healthcare. | The New Republic

• Imbolo Mbue, Olivia Laing, and more writers recall formative encounters with the (terrifying, sublime, unknowable) natural world. | Times Literary Supplement

• Yet another case of “Anonymous was a woman”: Henry David Thoreau’s sister, Sophia, singlehandedly edited four posthumous volumes of her brother’s essays. | JSTOR Daily

  Article continues after advertisement

• Barrett Swanson considers the powerhouse influencers who rule TikTok and the commodification of personhood. | Harper’s Magazine

• “I see fiction as restoring to the world some of its actual complexity.” Gish Jen on genre, characterization, and identity. | Ploughshares

Also on Lit Hub: Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters on why we need regenerative farming • Sasha Issenberg on the ACLU’S long fight for marriage equality • Read from A. Natasha Joukovsky’s debut novel, The Portrait of a Mirror