Lit Hub Daily: June 14, 2021

TODAY: In 1941, John Edgar Wideman, the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice, is born.  

• Kari Nixon considers the xenophobic legacy of The Hot Zone, “one of the most dangerous books ever to become a bestseller.” | Lit Hub Politics

• Rivka Galchen recommends reading as a remedy for writer’s block, anxiety, rage, boredom, and… allergies. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• “I am thinking of the place I grew up in and the self that was formed there, the version of me who knows that a body is meat but also someone’s child.” Akwaeke Emezi on growing up in Aba. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Laura Lindstedt wonders if the rise of audiobooks might change how authors—either consciously or subconsciously—write books. | Lit Hub

• “There’s enough room in space for everyone.” Lavie Tidhar considers the unsung history of Jewish writers who pioneered science fiction. | Lit Hub

• How Henry Alsberg went from rock bottom to directing “the most ambitious literary project ever attempted”—the Federal Writers Project. | Lit Hub History

• “I’m lonely but I’m writing songs for my first album, and songs are a lonely person’s occupation; songs are ghosts.” Sinead O’Connor remembers her early days in London. | Lit Hub Music

• “Archivists are always racing the clock and crossing their fingers.” On the precious, precarious work of preserving queer histories in the Pacific Northwest. | Atlas Obscura

• Stephen Kessler considers what we lose when poetry becomes more career path than spiritual vocation. | LARB

• Brian Broome contemplates the expectations of Black masculinity and how he was inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks. | Shelf Awareness

• Bruce Owens Grimm, Miguel M. Morales, and Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini discuss finding and fostering fat and queer and fat and trans voices. | The Rumpus

• “I thank you for being educated.” Read Kurt Vonnegut’s words for the class of 1994. | Lapham’s Quarterly

• Sean Illing asks Jarvis R. Givens of Harvard University about the most effective ways to teach the history of American racism. | Vox

Also on Lit Hub: Why we’re susceptible to the toxic allure of cults • Read a poem by Chet’la Sebree • Read from Karen Tucker’s debut novel, Bewilderness

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