Lit Hub Daily: October 22, 2021

• “But fiction is to literal representation what painting is to photography; it’s not claiming to be ‘real’ in the same way.” Mary Gaitskill on borrowing from real life in writing. | Lit Hub

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• On the 29-hour standoff that got Samuel L. Jackson expelled from Morehouse College. | Lit Hub Biography

• Catch up on the 2021 Pulitzer winners and finalists with these five audiobooks, featuring Cathy Park Hong, Carolyn Forché, and others. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “The pastoral thrives in places where the poet should not go, places where the cultivation of the poet is most useless.” Oscar Oswald muses on Theocritus, Layli Long Soldier, and the search for a wild poetry. | Lit Hub Poetry

• Who gets to write about the pandemic? A neurologist considers authenticity in medicine and creative writing. | Lit Hub

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• “I’d slipped a gear between living a story and making a story.” Craig Davidson on the secrets best left out of memoir. | Lit Hub Craft

• Ode to Sleater-Kinney: Amy Lee Lillard on channeling her anger through punk music… and bringing that magic to the page. | Lit Hub Music

• Elizabeth Strout’s Oh, William!, Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses, and Billy Porter’s Unprotected all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• Paul French recommends eight riveting true crime podcasts from all over the world. | CrimeReads

• “Clifton’s purpose is to teach us to see that we are, in fact, moving together and that we are, in fact, part of a large whole.” Tracy K. Smith on the luminous Lucille Clifton. | The Paris Review

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• Hanif Abdurraqib on the work of Aminah Robinson and how the MacArthur grant could help him impact folks in the city he loves. | Columbus Alive

• Kalani Pickhart discusses her debut novel and pursuing her MFA during the 2016 presidential election. | Chicago Review of Books

• Take a look inside Memphis’s Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, which houses a state-of-the-art recording studio, a robotics lab, and an art studio. | Smithsonian Magazine

• “Solitude without solace, shorn of Thoreauvian simplicity, of emotional absolution, is also real and too often it is the lot of women.” Rafia Zakaria on searching for Thoreau as a Pakistani American woman. | Slate

• Talia Richman and Emily Donaldson explore the controversy over books about race and gender in some Texas schools. | The Dallas Morning News

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• Explore the stories behind children’s books authored by William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, and other celebrated literary authors. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Marcus du Sautoy’s tips for building a better “memory palace” • Katherine May recommends books about the importance of walking • Read from Asali Solomon’s latest novel, The Days of Afrekete