Lit Hub Weekly: April 1 - April 5, 2024

• Get ready for the fun and the fantastical. Caroline Carlson recommends new children’s books by Maple Lam, Felicita Sala, Laurie Morrison and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• “Good writing advice is like a single gallon of gas. It will get you going, just not terribly far.” Ryan Chapman has some tips to start your engine. | Lit Hub Craft
• The collapse of Small Press Distribution has left over 400 publishers uncertain about the future. Adam Morgan talks to small press publishers about what happens next. | Lit Hub Bookstores
• Kwaneta Harris explores systemic censorship and the regulation of knowledge in Texas prisons. | Lit Hub Politics
• Jhumpa Lahiri shares the syllabus for her recent course on the diary. | The Paris Review
• “A gothic twist that Flannery O’Connor could never have imagined.” Thoughts on Trump’s new gig as a Bible salesman. | The Nation
• Examining the life and work of Raymond Williams and “radical culture in terms of ‘resources for hope.’” | Dissent
• Eisner-nominated cartoonist Leela Corman talks gender, wrestling, and putting the present in context with the past. | The Comics Journal
• What’s going on with PEN America? The organization has “failed the moment.” | The Intercept
• Stephanie LaCava talks to Fernanda Eberstadt about Warhol, ballet, and the New York art scene of the 70s. | Interview
• “Our culture tends to train us to understand police officers as enforcers of the law. But, a theme that runs throughout historiography of policing in the United States is the way that officers are trained to find and even construct criminality for themselves.” On the development of New York City as a police state. | Public Books
• Leslie Jamison considers the pop-psychification of gaslighting: “The popularity of the term testifies to a widespread hunger to name a certain kind of harm. But what are the implications of diagnosing it everywhere?” | The New Yorker
• When is a soap opera great literature? Maybe when it’s Dynasty. | The Walrus
• Sheila Heti interviews Lauren Oyler: “The first things I remember writing were journals and daily writing assignments in school, and then there were the private blogs I kept as a teenager.” | The Paris Review
• “Palestinian poetry is not only poetry for times of crisis. It is not breaking news or soundbites for the media. It is poetry for all time.” In conversation with poet Samer Abu Hawwash. | Asymptote 
• Meg Bernhard profiles Frank Warren, the man behind the PostSecret project, and considers “postcards as a medium of narrative.” | Hazlitt
• “Who is captive in this story, to whom, to what?” Lori Marso gives Christine Smallwood’s writing on Chantal Ackerman a deep read. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• What afrofuturism can teach us about climate activism. | JSTOR Daily
• Should writers include AI transparency statements in their books? Kester Brewin makes a case for yes. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub:

Sci-fi and fantasy reads coming in April • New paperbacks • Immigrant food memory and the power of a much-maligned trope • What it means to tell Muslim stories amid Islamophobia • The enduring mysteries of cancer’s effects on the human body • Delmore Schwartz’s literature of American Jewish identity • New poetry arriving in April • Jimin Han interviews Crystal Hana Kim • This week’s new books • What depictions of expat culture in China miss • How 19th century literary magazines pioneered a new kind of graphic design •  On remembering and forgetting in modern Ireland • Bothayna Al-Essa on opening a bookstore in Kuwait • Queer books for people with mommy issues • What Julia Alvarez has on her nightstand • David Semanki’s poem “California” • Kristen Arnett answers your burning questions • Hannah Zeavin interviews Anna Schechtman • Sahar Mustafah asks how we celebrate Arab American Heritage Month while genocide continues in Gaza • 5 reviews you need to read this week • How the AIDS crisis changed queer storytelling • Kelly Marie Coyne revisits The OC • Myriam J.A. Chancy on writing as an act of conjuring • Constance Debré on learning to love women • The possibilities and pitfalls of lunar settlement • Jane Ciabattari talks to Greg Sarris • The best reviewed books of the week