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TODAY: In 1939, Ford Madox Ford dies.
- “My failure to have a child was a story I didn’t want to tell, and it sapped language from me.” Alix Ohlin on motherhood, fertility, and gendered readings of women’s books. | Lit Hub
- “Far from quelling his hate and fear of marginalized people, knowledge and education may have made it worse.” On confronting a well-educated white supremacist troll. | Lit Hub
- Reading one hundred books just to write one: Heather O’Neill on the compulsive joy of endless research. | Lit Hub
- “S for Leslie Stephen / Well known to you.” How the alphabet helped Virginia Woolf understand her father. | Lit Hub
- Socialism in space? On Frank Malina, the rocket scientist whose dreams of spaceflight were as radical as his politics. | Lit Hub
- How Alison Bechdel understands her life as fiction: Gabrielle Bellot on the groundbreaking memoir Fun Home. | Lit Hub
- Campaign in Prose: ahead of tonight’s debate, here’s what the critics wrote about every 2020 democratic presidential candidate’s memoir. | Book Marks
- This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Pete Tosiello on empathy in reviewing and the cannibalization of the American press. | Book Marks
- The summer solstice has come and gone, and the year is near half-over, which means it’s time to take stock of the year’s best crime stories (so far). | CrimeReads
- Stephanie Merritt on sperm banks, space dreams, and literary worlds inhabited only by women, from Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora to Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s Herland. | The Guardian
- “There are probably all sorts of reasons that people voted for Trump. I can’t blame it on True Detective.” Emily Nussbaum on anti-heroes, audiences, and the theater of criticism. | Longreads
- “The small press world of Los Angeles is exploding”: Read about LitLit, the new book fair debuting next month in L.A. that was co-created by Hauser & Wirth Publishers and the Los Angeles Review of Books. | Los Angeles Times
- Did you know: Andy Warhol used to make picture books for friends and clients, including this “surreal fairy tale starring a sassy chimney, some hard-partying chairs, and a horny headboard.” | Interview
- In which Dwight Garner makes a good case for you to read Iris Murdoch, born 100 years ago, despite the fact that her “posthumous reputation is in semi-shambles.” | The New York Times
- Rachel Syme revisits Bette Midler’s autobiographical children’s book The Saga of Baby Divine, the story of “a Technicolor child in a black-and-white world.” | The New Yorker
Also on Lit Hub: Catherine Chung talks sophomore novels and invoking the muse on Reading Women • On Otherppl, Karen Stefano discusses the aftermath of sexual assault • Chavisa Woods on writing a memoir of sexism and abuse • Remembering Merce Cunningham and radical dance in postwar Paris • Read from Lauren Mechling’s debut novel How Could She.
