Lit Hub Daily: May 12, 2021

• Ashley Nelson Levy wonders how the pandemic might change motherhood literature into “something less about art and ambivalence and more on the loneliness born of this time.” | Lit Hub

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• As more tourists flock to the beach, they’re wreaking havoc—and raising questions about who owns the seaside, anyway. | Lit Hub

• Ian Dreiblatt recommends modern books set in ancient times, featuring the Roman Empire and partying in the days of Cleopatra. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “I think most writers live half lives. You’re half in your life and half in your head.” Read an interview with Anne Carson and Robert Currie. | Lit Hub

• Marc Hamer on following the Vita Sackville-West school of gardening: “It feels good to let somebody else make the decisions for a while.” | Lit Hub Nature

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• Why Jessica Anya Blau’s novel is an ode to Anne Tyler and her characters: “outsiders, weirdos, outcasts, and loners, all from Baltimore.” | Lit Hub

• “In the end, we are all working with the inherent unreliability of people.” Emily Midorikawa on the task of writing a truthful biography based on unreliable witnesses. | Lit Hub Craft

• Dracula, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and more rapid-fire book recs from Ruth Ware. | Book Marks

• S.A. Lelchuk with nine great thrillers featuring alter egos. | CrimeReads
  

• “Ghosts feel distinctly Korean to me, and they’re something I’ve shared closely with my mother.” Alex Sujong Laughlin considers the power of ghost stories and the Korean diaspora. | Harper’s Bazaar

• Larissa Pham talks about Pop Song and memoir writing. | Full Stop

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• “If Abrams is a skilled agitator and resetter of expectations, it is in large part because she has the capacity to imagine alternate realities.” Ayana Mathis tells the story of Stacey Abrams’ career as a novelist. | The Atlantic

• What does it mean to be a “Bennington girl”? Jill Eisenstadt examines that ubiquitous stereotype of an “artistic, sexually bold, brilliant or flaky, monied, spooky, (probably communist) free spirit”? | Guernica

• Carmen Maria Machado responds to the parents and school boards seeking to ban her memoir, In the Dream House. | The New York Times

• How much do writers make for their books? Sarah Nicolas looks at the numbers. | Book Riot

• As a Trinidadian author, Celeste Mohammed says her intention is “to represent the mood and the ethos of the current time, and the irony of how sun, sea, and sand coexist with dark shadows.” | The Rumpus

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Also on Lit Hub: Read a poem by Muriel Leung • Read a poem by Geoffrey Nutter • Read from Linda Rui Feng’s debut novel, Swimming Back to Trout River