Lit Hub Daily: March 24, 2023

• “Solidarity can never be pristine.” Arundhati Roy on free speech, failing democracy, and an India approaching gridlock. | Lit Hub Politics

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• “They are slimy, cold, wet, and jiggly, lacking a brain or a heart or any sort of remorse when they sting us.” Celebrating the renaissance of the world’s most venomous animal: the jellyfish. | Lit Hub Nature

• “Making out inside a Richard Serra / Strikes me as the right way to take in art.” Read a new poem by Sarah Jean Grimm. | Lit Hub Poetry

• Justine Sullivan recommends (highly relatable) hot mess heroines. | Lit Hub

• Sander van der Linden investigates the nefarious rise (and linguistics) of conspiracy theorists. | Lit Hub Politics

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• Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X, Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America, and Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• It’s not too late to join this Trans Rights Readathon and help raise money for trans advocacy organizations. | them

• How did mainstream and liberal press outlets become so enamored by J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy that they made him a senator? | If Books Could Kill

• Benjamin Nugent visits William Faulkner’s former home in Oxford, Mississippi, that “preserves the physical evidence of his compulsion to live in a house that summoned bygone times.” | The Paris Review

• “Water has the power to absolutely transform, to take one material and turn it into something else. What’s queerer than that?” Jenna Wortham recounts a trip to a queer nude beach in Mexico. | The New York Times

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• Strega Nona author Tomie dePaola will be memorialized on a USPS Forever Stamp on May 5th. | CBS Boston

• A gentle plea for more space horror. | Tor.com 

Also on Lit Hub: How to write a love story • New poetry by Jennifer Franklin • Read from Mona Simpson’s latest novel, Commitment