Lit Hub Daily: June 13, 2019

• Elliot Ackerman on visiting a refugee camp on the Syrian border after the story’s “gone elsewhere.” | Lit Hub
• Your Father’s Day book recommendations for dads who don’t read. (Or non-dads who do read! Books can do it all). | Lit Hub
• Sex, violence, and Jerry Lewis: Aleksandar Hemon on the preoccupations of his 10-year-old self. | Lit Hub
• “ROUGH OUTLINE FOR A BIOGRAPHY (IF ANY).” What the 39,933 items on Peter Matthiessen’s computer mean for the art of biography. | Lit Hub
• “The West is being destroyed, not by migrants, but by the fear of migrants.” Suketu Mehta on the origins of anti-immigrant rhetoric. | Lit Hub
• Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho has won the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award, the richest award for a single novel published in English. | The Hub
• Randall Sullivan has been investigating the murder of The Notorious B.I.G. for over 20 years. He’s discovered links to the LAPD, a silenced FBI investigation, and a web of Los Angeles crime. | CrimeReads
• Parul Sehgal on Naomi Wolf’s suspect mythology, Terry Tempest Williams on Robert Macfarlane’s beautiful darkness, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me: a deployment of odd nuggets of information OR a penetrating look at what it means to be human? | Book Marks
• A Hollywood literary agency has dropped former Central Park Five prosecutor Linda Fairstein. It is the latest fallout for the bestselling author after the premiere of When They See Us, a Netflix series about the case. | Essence
• The Strand, one of the oldest and most popular independent bookstores in New York City, has been given landmark status by city officials—and the owners aren’t happy. | New York Post
• “Writing is inherently paradoxical…what we hate about it is also what we love about it.” An important examination of why writing sucks. | The Cut
• On Catherine, Called Birdy, the queer, feminist middle-grade novel that defined the childhoods of many women you know. | NYLON
• Michael Pollan, Ayelet Waldman, and T.C. Boyle weigh in on “LSD literature.” | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: On The Maris Review, Anna Merlan talks fake news and conspiracy theories • On Fiction/Non/Fiction, Jonny Diamond on the creation of Lit Hub Radio, and more podcasting pro-tips • Literary Disco‘s summer reading episode • Why France Bizot uses books as the canvas for her art • Françoise Gilot recalls her life with Picasso during the Nazi occupation of Paris • Read an excerpt from Herman Koch’s The Ditch.