Lit Hub Daily: June 14, 2017

• Tracy K. Smith has been named Poet Laureate of the United States. Listen to her on God, poetry, and parenting in New York City · Read her in conversation with fellow poet Gregory Pardlo · On memories of her mother: from her memoir, Ordinary Light. | New York Times, Literary Hub
• The curious case of mistaken identity at the heart of an American classic: Jamie Harrison on Legends of the Fall. | Literary Hub
• Catherine Lacey offers a failed syllabus for a possibly doomed writing class on the subject of love. | Literary Hub
• 10 great works of labyrinthine literature, in honor of Jorge Luis Borges. | Literary Hub
• When “interesting” isn’t interesting at all: on our terrible over-reliance on a useless word. | Literary Hub
• Khadijah on encountering the male gaze. | Literary Hub
• S.J. Sindu tries to balance Bollywood inspirations with American expectations. | Literary Hub
• Nicole Dennis-Benn, Rabih Alameddine, and David France are among the winners of the 29th annual Lambda Literary Awards. | Lambda Literary
• “What we’re seeing is the acceleration of the relationship.” Ruby Brunton on I’m Very Into You and the intimacy of digital correspondence. | Real Life
• “Freed from the burden of pioneering the genre,” how books by Janet Mock and Caitlyn Jenner mark a new evolution in the trans memoir. | The New York Times
• She wants the freedom to move on, to make things hard on herself: A profile of Mallory Ortberg, one year after the shuttering of The Toast. | Motherboard
• “If you have a good time doing it, somehow that’s where you really have crossed the line.” Blue Money author Janet Capron on sex work, double-standards, and anti-heroines. | Playboy
• Crossing genres and geographic boundaries: 21 books by Maori and Pasifika writers to add to your reading list. | Academy of New Zealand Literature
• “The images of things have become things themselves.” An excerpt from Teju Cole’s Blind Spot. | The New Yorker

And on Literary Hub: On the anniversary of the master’s death, Borges tells us about the task of the artist • Talking to Zinzi Clemmons, author of What We Lose •  Read “We Were the Drowners,” a new story by Josie Sigler, from The Masters Review.