Lit Hub Daily: October 26, 2021

• “The secret reason I read, the only reason I read, is precisely for those moments in which the story being told is deeply and almost mystically alert to the world.” Teju Cole on the wonder of epiphanic writing. | Lit Hub Criticism

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• Terry Tempest Williams on the appetites of the great Jim Harrison, whose “poems are checkpoints on the map of his soul.” | Lit Hub Poetry

• Alison Stine puzzles over one of the more fun problems of fiction: how to name your characters. | Lit Hub Craft

• “I think what I really want is for people to miss her as much as I do.” Jenny Qi considers how to write an obituary for your mother. | Lit Hub

• Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen looks to Jane Eyre for a lesson about the plus side of narcissism. | Lit Hub

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• “This is f—ed.” Behind the intellectual property battle that nearly derailed the COVID-19 vaccine. | Lit Hub Science

• Rektok Ross recommends nine YA survival thrillers that ask, what wouldn’t you do to survive? | CrimeReads

• On Keen On, Margaret D. Jacobs on our troubled history of injustice to Indigenous people, and W. Ralph Eubanks on a journey through the literary history of Mississippi. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• “Writers write what they have to, reap the consequences, and they alone know what they can bear.” Molly Fisk on the story her uncle, John Updike, wrote about her father. | Harper’s Bazaar

• Parul Sehgal wonders: is Amazon changing the novel? | The New Yorker

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• Lincoln Michel makes the case for the best novel he’s read this year: Percival Everett’s The Trees. | The Biblioracle Recommends

• Melissa Lozada-Oliva talks about her new novel-in-verse, Selena’s legacy, and the messiness of Latinidad and representation. | NPR

• The authors on the Booker Prize shortlist discuss their inspirations, from a mugshot to a half-million acres of wilderness. | The Guardian

• French legislators are taking steps to prevent Amazon from wiping out independent bookstores. | Reuters

• “Now, we’re in a situation where even our indie and DIY institutions have some corporate claws in them.” Dan Ozzi on the state of punk and his new book. | Vice

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Also on Lit Hub: 15 new books out this week • How 11 punk bands sold out and shaped music history • Read from Violaine Huisman’s newly translated novel, The Book of Mother (tr. Lesli Camhi)