Lit Hub Daily: June 22, 2022

“There’s a sub-culture here says / Go ahead, shoot folks.” Three poems of gun violence in America, from Alissa Quart and Rodrigo Toscano. | Lit Hub Politics

Rebecca Solnit and Margaret Atwood talk about Barry Lopez, Orion Magazine, and the past and future of environmental writing. | Lit Hub 

Lyndsie Bourgon on the terrible problem of tree poaching. Yes, it’s (depressingly) a thing. | Lit Hub Nature

“During my first year of research, I became concerned that my interest in the tongue was devolving into obsession, even addiction.” Kate Crowcroft on her strange relationship with the strangest organ. | Lit Hub

Turns out, we have poetry to thank for our understanding of photosynthesis. (Thanks, poets!) | Lit Hub Science

While the sick languished, the rest partied: Life on a cruise ship the night before COVID shut down the world. | Lit Hub Life in a Pandemic

What can we learn from Sierra fanatics? A conversation with one such admirer: sci-fi novelist (and mountain climber) Kim Stanley Robinson. | Lit Hub Nature

“The common saying when it comes to getting pregnant and getting an agent is that it only takes one.” Emily Lackey on her year of trying. | Lit Hub Memoir

Julie Clark on the female con artists who grift and bamboozle their way into our collective consciousness. | CrimeReads

Lauren Groff considers the dangers of the luxury beach resort: “I’m busy obsessing over the unintended consequences of our stay, such as the environmental degradation caused by bringing wasteful tourists to delicate ecosystems and the racist and classist issues of displacement.” | The Atlantic

“I came to know Butler perhaps the way she would have wanted me to know her, the way we all should know her: in the company of others.” Sasha Ann Panaram on the world of Octavia E. Butler. | Public Books

Denne Michele Norris introduces Both/And, an essay series for trans and gender nonconforming writers of color: “​​Giving voice to our perspective, our history, what transness is, and what it isn’t—this is work that we must do. And we must be the loudest, most visible ones doing it.” | Electric Lit

In honor of its 125th anniversary, the Brooklyn Public Library has put together a quintessential Brooklyn reading list. | BPL

“The challenge is that mothering resists a coherent narrative, existing in glimpses, anecdotes, the baffled awareness that time is lurching on without you.” Joanna Scutts considers the art-baby problem. | The New Republic

Todd Cronan discusses Zadie Smith’s relationship to class, which “travels a surprising and instructive route.” | Los Angeles Review of Books