Lit Hub Daily: June 15, 2023

• Weird wild stuff: Ann Beattie close-reads Frederick Barthelme’s story “Box Step,” featuring the underworld, an ant farm, and a souvenir palace (and that’s just for starters). | Lit Hub Criticism

• Yao Xiao considers the (delightful) utopian fantasy of American Born Chinese and the potential for edgier stories for Asian Americans. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Find the vibe, break up the band, and other lessons in interviewing musicians from Chris Payne. | Lit Hub Music

• “As a writer, do I indulge in the very bunker mentality that my novel criticizes? Do I want—more than I admit—to escape?” Deborah Willis on the existential contradictions of writing fiction on an imperiled planet. | Lit Hub

• “An almost violent kind of achievement: a writer knifing forward, slicing open a new terrain.” 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• David Remnick remembers legendary editor Robert Gottlieb, who died yesterday at age 92. | The New Yorker

• “We saw each other maybe once a year, whenever she had trouble with men. She could never figure it out, she was often lonely. I was lonely too, but I’d been lonely for a long time.” Two stories by Alena Lodkina. | HEAT

• Nadira Goffe talks to Ali Hazelwood about her best-selling STEM romance novels. | Slate

• Tired: Girlbossing. Wired: Critterposting, the Beatrix Potter-inspired anti-hustle movement. | Vox

• Ryan Skinnell on the destructive myth of the universal genius. | JSTOR Daily

• “Parents who want to protect their children, by not making them feel guilty because great grandpa was a Klansman aren’t protecting their kids from anything.” Art Spiegelman on fascism and book bans. | PEN America

Also on Lit Hub: Aisha Harris reflects on the “black friend” trope, then and now • Why we need stories that center female friendships • Read from Itamar Vieira Junior’s newly translated novel, Crooked Plow (tr. Johnny Lorenz)