Lit Hub Daily: May 31, 2022

TODAY: In 1819, Walt Whitman is born.  

• What can we learn from the “bad gays” of history—those “who do not flatter us, and whom we cannot make into heroes”? | Lit Hub History

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• Beat the post–long weekend blues with 17 new books out this week. | The Hub

• “I realized that I was no longer a skeptical observer of the Northern hypothesis of Shakespeare authorship; I had become a collaborator.” Michael Blanding on the (extremely compelling) Sir Thomas North theory. | Lit Hub History

• David Yoon’s 13 Habits of Highly Effective Writers. | Lit Hub Craft & Advice

• On Star Trek’s long (long) road to embracing queer characters. | Lit Hub TV

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• In an era of “fake news,” Clayton Wickham argues that historical fiction novels “invite us to think more—not less—about the relationship between truth and fabrication.” | Lit Hub Criticism

• SECRETS OF THE BOOK DESIGNER: Peter C. Baker talks to Linda Huang about making the cover for his new novel, Planes. | Lit Hub Design

• Nina LaCour reflects on growing up alongside her teen characters. | Lit Hub  

• “Men only want one thing and it’s to take your prosthetic leg and strand you in a barn.” B.D. McClay introduces the “femcel canon.” | Gawker

• Phil Klay on the secrecy of American military operations. | The New York Times

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• “The alternatives to growth are many, and multiplying.” Michelle Nijhuis reads two new books that enumerate the benefits of life in a slower economy. | NYRB

• George Saunders offers ten ways to think about endings. | Story Club with George Saunders

• “I think we are still trying to find a language for what Gunn and others of his and my generation survived, if that is the word. Withstood.” Hilton Als on the letters of Thom Gunn. | The New Yorker

• When Maeve Binchy met Samuel Beckett: “He was endlessly finicky and pernickety about the height and shape of the props, he ran up and down Clov’s ladder a dozen times to see was it the right kind of ladder, and if it gave Clov space to turn around and deliver his lines.” | The Irish Times

Also on Lit Hub: Kim Stanley Robinson on waking up in the High Sierra • Lydia Conklin on the invaluable gift of writing residences • Read from Ann Leary’s latest novel, The Foundling

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