Lit Hub Daily: May 31, 2023

• “How had I, who had read widely and enthusiastically in queer theory, failed to take seriously the fundamental ontology upon which my own life was being refounded?” Grace Lavery on the devices of trans identity in literature. | Lit Hub

• Edwin Heathcote in praise of the park bench, a place of both solitude and belonging. | Lit Hub Design

• 26 new paperbacks for your June reading. | The Hub

• Monica Potts on the pre-destination of motherhood in rural America: “Women in Clinton spoke to me of pregnancy as if it were something that alighted from the universe that they were powerless to prevent or end.” | Lit Hub

• The month in literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of May. | Lit Hub

• Gabrielle Bellot considers the mermaids of Walt Disney, Hans Christian Andersen, and W.B. Yeats. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• The kids are OK: Kelly McMasters on the ethics of family memoir. | Lit Hub

• Exploring the lives of trees by decentering human perspectives. | The Atlantic

• Is art prostitution? Kate Wolf looks at two new books on sex work and commoditization. | Momus

• “Writing shouldn’t be so unstable that one needs another job to support it. But having another job doesn’t diminish the work of writing, either.” Rainesford Stauffer on the hobby/job dichotomy. | Esquire

• “It could be argued that she isn’t a writer but a performance artist’s take on a writer.” Lili Anolik profiles Caroline Calloway. | Vanity Fair

• In a conversation with Sally Rooney, Annie Ernaux said the Nobel Prize fell into her life “like a bomb.” | The Guardian

• Hannah Gadsby’s new exhibition critiquing Picasso, “It’s Pablo-matic,” opens this week at the Brooklyn Museum. | Brooklyn Magazine

Also on Lit Hub: Alba Donati on returning to her rural Tuscan roots • The 12 best book covers of May • Read a story from Theodore McCombs’s debut collection, Uranians