Lit Hub Daily: June 25, 2021

TODAY: In 1928, Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, who worked under the pseudonym Peyo, best-known for the comic strip The Smurfs, is born. 

• “It’s a place for writers to publish and earn money directly and instantaneously without any traditional publishing gatekeepers. It’s also a brand-new subculture cut off from a larger writing culture that doesn’t understand it.” Walker Caplan on the writers using NFTs to make a living. | Lit Hub

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• Hebe Uhart recounts the zoos he’s visited around the world, each “a piece of the country wedged inside a vast city.” | Lit Hub

• “When I write true stories about my sister, I’m writing about a ghost.” Brian Phillip Whalen considers the agency of dead loved ones in fiction, where they’re no longer bound to reality. | Lit Hub

• INTERVIEW WITH AN INDIE PRESS: Archipelago Books spotlights the best in new translated literature. | Lit Hub

• The change you want to see: Ann Kjellberg on newly opened bookstore Hidden Gems Literary Emporium. | Lit Hub

• Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals, Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus, and Laura Lippman’s Dream Girl all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

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• “I’m attuned to justice.” A brief profile of Namwali Serpell. | Harvard Magazine

• Meet Alexandra Huynh, Amanda Gorman’s California successor as youth poet laureate. | Los Angeles Times

• “I didn’t understand that learning to say no was part of rising to the occasion.” Ashley C. Ford on managing expectations, work-life balance, and her new memoir. | The Creative Independent

• Isaac Fitzsimons discusses his debut and LGBTQ+ justice issues. | Kirkus

• “Girls falling for fae, queens falling for princesses, and boys waking the prince of their dreams with true love’s kiss.” Check out these queer retellings of fairy tales. | BookRiot

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• Zakiya Dalila Harris recommends her most memorable reads. | Elle

• “Her writing turns us into better readers.” Helen Garner remembers Janet Malcolm. | The Guardian

• “I didn’t know where this book would take me.” Clint Smith on following the story of slavery in America. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Dispatches from government quarantine in South Korea • Véronique Pouillard on the illegal copyist networks in haute couture • Read from Mariana Oliver’s newly translated book Migratory Birds (trans. Julia Sanches) 

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