Lit Hub Daily: June 2, 2020

• “Donald Trump’s word piles fill public space with static, the way pollutants in an industrial city can saturate the air.” Masha Gessen on American autocracy and the end of meaning. | Lit Hub Politics
• How Shanghai became a city of literary experimentation: Dr. Jin Li on the effects of social and economic upheaval. | Lit Hub
• Patrice Vecchione recalls the interview that Adrienne Rich never wanted published. | Lit Hub
• Short stories for short attention spans: James Tate Hill recommends five audiobooks for the news-weary. | Lit Hub
• “There had doubtlessly been innumerable acts of heroism among enslaved people during those three centuries, and yet most of them can never be recovered from a cruel historical oblivion.” On Sam Sharpe and the revolt that ended British slavery. | Lit Hub
• ON THE VBC: On Personal Space, Matt Ortile talks grindr, sex, and decolonization • Julia Alvarez in conversation with John Freeman • Susan Briante and Raquel Gutiérrez discuss the limits of documentary poetics, on Rekindled. | Lit Hub
• This interview with Patrick Hoffman further proves that his intricate crime novels are the books we should all be reading right now. | CrimeReads
• Little Family author Ishmael Beah shares five books he read in primary school about people and animals surviving the fates they are dealt, from Treasure Island to Animal Farm. | Book Marks
• Most employees at a Minneapolis-based literary agency quit after the owner, Dawn Frederick, tweeted about calling the police on nearby looters. | Publishers Weekly
• Melissa Febos on Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and its “model of love in which independence is freedom and love is a choice between equals.” | The Believer
• “If you don’t mention it, it is the massive elephant in the room.” Here’s how the pandemic is forcing some tough rewrites for authors. | The Guardian
• “My hope for all readers is that they will shut the book and run out and protest. That’s what I always expect people to do. They seldom do it.” Barbara Ehrenreich on anger, curiosity, and truth. | The New Republic
• Tochi Onyebuchi on the responsibility that Black writers contend with amid constant violence against Black people. | Tor.com
• Read “Pursuit as Happiness,” a previously unpublished story by Ernest Hemingway. | The New Yorker
• The first online, all-star studded Hay Literary Festival was a hit, attracting nearly half a million viewers. | BBC

Also on Lit Hub: From quarantine, Kerstin Preiwuss writes letters to Emily Dickinson, Simone de Beauvoir, and her children • A peek inside the fridge of a foodie power couple • Read an excerpt from Naoise Dolan’s debut novel Exciting Times.