Lit Hub Daily: March 8, 2021

TODAY: In 2012, Simin Daneshvar, Iranian novelist, dies. 

• “It is an odd kind of optimism, but it is the kind I am in search of.” Leora Fridman considers Takis Wuerger’s controversial Holocaust novel, Stella. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Megan Nolan recommends unrequited love stories, peopled with yearning characters who “may be crushed by their need, but not spiritually lessened by it.” | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Gabriela Houston on how to write an epic story without sacrificing intimate details. | Lit Hub Craft
• “We cannot choose our mother tongue, but everything in writing is about choosing.” Betina González talks to Yuri Herrera about immigrant narratives and writing as an experiment. | Lit Hub
• Amazon finally pulled a right-wing activist’s book promoting conversion therapy, but they continue to wait far too long to shut down both anti-trans and anti-vaccine content, writes Gillian Branstetter. | Lit Hub
• Lauren Du Graf writes about her hometown library, which, since last March, “has existed mostly as an abstraction, one of several places that my mind knows but my body no longer experiences.” | Lit Hub
• “Perhaps what we call the ‘supernatural’ is simply the nature either we don’t see or don’t comprehend.” On Algernon Blackwood’s novella The Willows. | Lit Hub
• Invisible Man, The Color Purple, the Tintin series, and more rapid-fire book recs from Viet Thanh Nguyen. | Book Marks
• “When we go to music we’re often looking for something we can’t even name, but maybe music, or a song, will show us.” Joy Harjo talks to Rebecca Bengal about her latest album. | Vanity Fair
• How Véra Nabokov relentlessly championed Lolita. | The New Yorker
• “Latter-day writing about Rosa Luxemburg tends to focus on her personal letters and romantic relationships, pushing her views about capitalism and the way to end it into the background.” On the problem with over-humanizing our heroes. | Jacobin
• Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: J. Howard Rosier on Nicole Fleetwood’s Marking Time. | Lit Hub
• If you’re struggling with how to arrange your poetry collection, look to the mix tape. | Electric Literature
• “Black history should not be segmented from how we think about American history. It should be baked into the curriculum.” Ilyasah Shabazz on the necessity of rewriting American history books. | Elle
• “Change is constant, but it’s not real, I want to say.” Duchess Goldblatt on how life changed—and didn’t change—after writing a book. | The Cut

Also on Lit Hub: Michaeleen Doucleff on what modern parents can learn from hunter-gatherers • Read from Semezdin Mehmedinović’s newly translated novel, My Heart (trans. Celia Hawkesworth)

---