Lit Hub Daily: September 6, 2022

• Go back to school with syllabi and reading lists from ten of our favorite writer-educators, featuring literary guidance from Ocean Vuong, Julia May Jonas, Sam Lipsyte, Alexandra Kleeman, and more! | Lit Hub

• What does it mean to really listen? Michael Frank reflects on receiving—and writing—the story of a remarkable life. | Lit Hub Craft & Advice

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• “Are lies a latent hazard, or are they a usual condition of democracy itself?” Considering Hannah Arendt and complicity. | Lit Hub Politics

• “Has America evolved to the point where gay love scenes no longer shock or dissuade straight readers?” Cary Johnson on the new, new Black Gay Renaissance. | Lit Hub

• How “Love Commandos” are re(arranging) marriage in modern India by helping young lovers cross caste lines. | Lit Hub Religion

• At the Red Ink Series, Samantha Hunt, Madhushree Ghosh, Ursula Villarreal-Moura, Annabelle Gurwitch, and Naheed Phiroze Patel muse on Virginia Woolf’s “matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.” | Lit Hub Roundtable

• “In my entire life as a writer, I’ve never wished so hard for a book to succeed and also wished against it.” Why Carolyn Hays wrote her memoir, a letter to her transgender daughter, under a pen name. | Lit Hub Memoir

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• Bone witches, mechas, and folklore retellings from Ling Ma, Tamsyn Muir, and Neon Yang all feature among September’s Must-Read SF and Fantasy Books. | Book Marks

• “What’s the difference between education and indoctrination?” Jeffrey Aaron Snyder looks at the long dispute over what to teach in public schools. | The Point

• Julie R. Enszer pays tribute to six lesbian feminist writers of the South who, with their work, “created a place to struggle and a place to engage and reimagine.” | The Bitter Southerner

• “In the last several years of contemporary literature, there has existed alongside the relentlessly good character a spicier alternative: the relentlessly bad character.” Kate Shannon Jenkins considers the decline of the redemption arc in contemporary literature. | Gawker

• Joe Hernandez looks at what happened to an Oklahoma teacher who gave students access to banned books, and whose credentials could now be taken away. | NPR

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• Clare Thorp delves into new books that explore female desire. | BBC

• Remembering Barbara Ehrenreich, whose books focused on the “overlooked and the forgotten” of society. | The New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: A conversation with Jonathan Escoffery • A reading list of fictional characters who find motivation in beauty • Read from Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel, The Marriage Portrait