TODAY: In 1993, Nobel Prize laureate William Golding dies.
- JUNETEENTH SHOULD BE A NATIONAL HOLIDAY: Readings in Black history and joy, from Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Robin Coste Lewis, Fred Moten, and more · Aaron Robertson: thinking of Black families, together and apart, on Juneteenth · Harmony Holiday on America’s history of policing Black music. | Lit Hub
- What does it really mean to be presidential? John Dickerson examines our expectation of one of the hardest jobs in the world. | Lit Hub Politics
- Carceral terror comes as no surprise: Laura Briggs on America’s long history of imprisoning children. | Lit Hub History
- “Do I really know what I think I knew 30 seconds ago, back when I began the sentence?” In which Irina Dumitrescu manages to vanquish pandemic distraction long enough to write about it. | Lit Hub
- “It takes a long time to get to gratitude in my experience. It takes a long time to even get to grief.” Lea Carpenter on loss, anger, and her father. | Lit Hub
- New titles from Joseph O’Connor, Emily Temple, Max Brooks, and Paul Preston all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- “Our very existence has been outlawed, criminalized, medicalized.” James Polchin gives us a queer true crime reading list. | CrimeReads
- A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously to rescind the Literary Landmark status of Confederate president Jefferson Davis’ house in Mississippi. | Book Riot
- It may not be the best time for a cross-country American road trip, but you can still enjoy a list of 50 book recommendations for all 50 states. | Forbes
- On the black women librarians who were making anti-racist reading lists during WWII. | Washington Post
- “My books would contain a map of where I had traveled and what had conveyed me, keeping me afloat.” Aleida Rodríguez on literature and time travel. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- “Because I believed I would never catch up, I stopped trying to, and just started to write the books that mattered to me.” Tayari Jones on finding professional success. | Vogue UK
- James McBride’s Deacon King Kong is being developed for TV. | Televisual
- “It may seem as if I’m writing the same poem over and over again. But when the events don’t change, what can you do?” Poet Colleen McElroy on why the current global protests feel different. | KUOW
Also on Lit Hub: Poetry in letters: An exchange between Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison • “Survivor’s Guilt: A Villanelle”: A poem by Anacaona Rocio Milagro • Read an excerpt from Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s novel The Fallen, trans. by Frank Wynne.
