Lit Hub Daily: September 8, 2021

• Margaret Atwood recounts becoming a writer under the intimidating (and brilliant) shadow of Simone de Beauvoir. | Lit Hub

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• “There will never be a greater or more powerful human technology, which is why literacy was kept from women for a very long time.” Lauren Groff in conversation with Rebecca Makkai. | Lit Hub

• Vanessa Guignery considers the “enchanting and terrifying” worlds of Ben Okri’s boundary-blurring fiction. | Lit Hub Criticism

• “Those who thought the play was irredeemably antisemitic were, the consensus went, vulgar and whiny— and, completely coincidentally, they were also Jewish.” Dara Horn (reluctantly) revisits The Merchant of Venice. | Lit Hub Theater

• Belle Marie Torres Velázquez was the only doctor on Culebra, an island of Puerto Rico—and then Hurricanes Irma and María struck. | Lit Hub

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• “In failing to look for the nation in these books, we fail to see Rooney’s stories in all their richness.” On the (often-overlooked) essentiality of Sally Rooney’s Irishness. | Gawker

• Lauren Groff considers how she found refuge in her latest novel’s community of nuns. | BookPage

• Chris Lehmann on J.D. Vance’s “conversion to the MAGA cause.” | The Baffler

• “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing.” Judith Butler on gender categories and queer politics. | The Guardian

• Qian Julie Wang discusses her memoir, education, and equity. | Shondaland

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• Jeffrey Zuckerman interviews Carl de Souza. | Words Without Borders

• Jon Wiener talks to Art Spiegelman about his latest project and comics-related controversies. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Sophie Gilbert discusses the work of Lauren Groff, whose books “have been a good few beats ahead of the most pressing issues of the moment.” | The Atlantic

Also on Lit Hub: On the race to a COVID-19 vaccine (and power, and profit) • A poem by Phillip B. Williams • Read from Simone De Beauvoir’s newly translated novel, Inseparable (tr. Sandra Smith)