Lit Hub Daily: June 29, 2022

• “This sounds crazy. That you start a book because you have thought of two words that make you happy.” In one of her last interviews, Joan Didion talks to Hari Kunzru about Blue Nights and giving up the yellow Corvette. | Lit Hub

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• Tackle writers block by writing badly, and other advice from Jason Mott. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• The cape seen ’round the world: On the origins of cosplay, circa 1939. | Lit Hub

• “Glamor was in the eye of the beholder, not the person performing or working in the spotlight.” Mary Pipher on the unglamorous side of publishing a bestseller. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Why 1997 was a pivotal year for (still-closeted) George Michael. | Lit Hub Music

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• Alexis Schaitkin on motherhood and creativity, or when your baby and manuscript share the same due date. | Lit Hub Parenting

• Julia Shaw delves into the modern origins and evolving accessibility of bisexual identity. | Lit Hub History

• When a talisman from childhood doesn’t hold up. | Lit Hub Comics

• “Meanwhile, my sisters and I would discuss various ways to die.” Erika Kobayashi on growing up in a household of Sherlock translators. | CrimeReads

• “Bodies that can give birth don’t own themselves. They are owned. By the structures they are born into.” Writers around the world respond to the Roe v. Wade decision. | Astra Magazine

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• Amna A. Akbar on intersectional activism and discovering Abolition. Feminism. Now., “a powerful meditation on the queer, trans, and feminist politics at the core of organizing against criminalization.” | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, bisexuality, and TikTok. | HuffPost

• Elisa Gonzales considers Marilyn Monroe’s poetry. | The Paris Review

• Kelsey Osgood reports on the new crop of Conservative Amish and Mennonite women writers “striving to create a literary canon that shows true Plain life, warts and all.” | The Atlantic

• “Patrick is intrigued by all of the bad guys.” James D. Walsh profiles Patrick Radden Keefe. | New York Magazine

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• Cory Silverberg talks to Elaine Blair about letting go of conventional wisdom to write accessible sex-ed books for kids. | The New York Times Magazine

Also on Lit Hub: Keri Blakinger on her first week in jail • A poem by CJ Evans from his new collection, Lives • Read from Jessi Jezewska Stevens’ latest novel, The Visitors