Lit Hub Daily: May 18, 2023

• “It’s an underdog story if ever there was one.” Matthew Shindell looks at how Mars became central to the stories we tell about ourselves. | Lit Hub Space!

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• Samantha Irby and Ben Percy offer up some real talk about what it’s like to write for the screen. | Lit Hub Radio

• Read the winning poems of the 92 Street Y Discovery Contest, selected by judges Kaveh Akbar, Tracie Morris, and Simone White. | Lit Hub Poetry

• What animation can do for Murakami adaptations that live action films cannot (yes, cats are involved). | Lit Hub Film & TV

• When Arthur Conan Doyle got pranked by a couple of schoolgirls. | Lit Hub

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• Exploding shrimp and luminous fangs: What William Beebe found at the bottom of the ocean. | Lit Hub Nature

• “The result is both addictive and slightly sickening, like reading transcripts of someone else’s catty group chat…” 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• Where to start reading Neil Gaiman. | The New York Times

• If you loved the books on the International Booker Prize shortlist, here are the films you should watch. | The Booker Prize

• The PEN Ukraine executive board has responded to The Atlantic’s reporting on Masha Gessen’s resignation from the PEN America board. | PEN Ukraine

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• The woman who coined the term “safetyism” has created a safe space for people who *feel* canceled (or, like, they *could* get canceled). | The New Yorker

• Speaking of actual “thought criminals,” an Illinois middle school teacher had the police called by parents over a book she chose for students. | NBC

• The lyrics of Johnny Cash will be collected in a book for the first time. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: A reading list of lawyers (and law students) turned writers • Jolene McIlwain on rural America and storyelling • Read from Ana Castillo’s latest novel, Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home