TODAY: In 1940, Richard Wright’s Native Son is published by Harper.
- “I wanted to create something that had dignity. I feel like we did that.” Ijeoma Oluo talks to Jasmine J. Mahmoud about the Seattle Artist Relief Fund, plus the dangers of white male mediocrity. | Lit Hub
- What to read this month based on your astrology sign, featuring Kazuo Ishiguro, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Melissa Febos, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “If a writer does not tell, who the hell is going to?” Kim Echlin on writing fiction that bears witness to crimes against humanity. | Lit Hub
- Melissa Breyer recounts the historic rise of women street photographers in the 1920s and 30s. | Lit Hub History
- “My mother tongue is a linguistic shipwreck; and it is from there that I write the story of my grandparents.” Claudio Lomnitz on the importance of reclaiming family history. | Lit Hub Memoir
- A roundtable on making choices in a writing career, featuring Danielle Evans, Eula Biss, Sejal Shah, and Christa Parravani. | Lit Hub
- “At the center of a barbaric scene—with smushed beetles staining my fingers orange and mud soaking the knees of my pants as I crawled through rows of potatoes—I began to question my role in my own story. Was I the villain?” Julie Carrick Dalton on the kind of antagonist that every story needs. | Lit Hub
- Dhalgren, The Twits, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and more rapid-fire book recs from poet and translator Ted Dodson. | Book Marks
- “How can one cover—let alone judge—what one refuses to see? What one is institutionally mandated to ignore?” Parul Sehgal considers the New York Times Book Review at 125. | The New York Times
- “My relationship to books—apart from when I am paid to write about them—feels like a private act.” Getting lost in the Instagram accounts of Black bookstores. | Ssense
- Are crossword puzzles the key to saving print media? | Inside Hook
- “Those books—the classics—helped seed the fertile field for storytelling in every form, including video games.” On the connection between literature and game development. | Wired
- Considering the “radical tenderness” of Olga Tokarczuk. | The Yale Review
- “Like anyone, I’m still a work in progress, but I do think writing this book helped me understand myself better.” Jaya Saxena on her new book, the allure of crystals, and how to exist in a pandemic. | Catapult
- On the similar lives and work of Susan Taubes and Clarice Lispector, who both “hid from the press, deliberately endowing themselves with a secretive aura.” | LARB
Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual book events • (Almost) every Cultural Reference in Pretend It’s a City, annotated • Read from Russell Banks’ latest novel, Foregone
