Lit Hub Weekly: June 12 – 16, 2017

• “[She] made pictures that grew out of and described the loneliness we are all taught to be ashamed of.” Hilton Als on Diane Arbus. | The New York Review of Books
• A writer who was not at home in the world, but who still created work of arresting beauty: On Elizabeth Bishop. | The New Republic
• “If I’m going to fail I want that failure to be spectacular. I want it to be big.” An interview with Maaza Mengiste. | The Creative Independent
• “In France we like our cows too.” Christian Lorentzen speaks with Michel Houellebecq about his new photography exhibition, “French Bashing.” | Garage Magazine
• Apocalypse and nihilism: on the enduring preoccupations of Russian literature and how its great writers tackled the question of revolution. | The New York Times
• The canvas is the text: Zadie Smith on the paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, an “artist . . . unusual in describing herself as a writer as much as a painter.” | The New Yorker
• Nicole Dennis-Benn, Rabih Alameddine, and David France are among the winners of the 29th annual Lambda Literary Awards, and A Horse Walks Into a Bar by Israeli author David Grossman has won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. | Lambda Literary, The Man Booker Prizes
• “What quicker way to make ordinary people into heroes and villains than to turn the weather against them and destroy everything they know?” On the rise and utility of fiction about climate change. | Smithsonian Magazine
• “What we’re seeing is the acceleration of the relationship.” Ruby Brunton on I’m Very Into You and the intimacy of digital correspondence. | Real Life
• “If you have a good time doing it, somehow that’s where you really have crossed the line.” Blue Money author Janet Capron on sex work, double-standards, and anti-heroines. | Playboy
• The draft of Milo Yiannopoulos’ book (which “is organized by sections named for groups of people Yiannopoulos claims hate him”) is as bad as one would expect. | BuzzFeed News
• But what is really going on when authors claim they are speaking on behalf of minor fictional characters? On books premised around minor-character elaboration. | The Baffler
• She wants the freedom to move on, to make things hard on herself: A profile of Mallory Ortberg, one year after the shuttering of The Toast. | Motherboard
• The Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, founded to “honor the legacy of one of the most original and accomplished poets to emerge in recent years—and to reward outstanding poets for years to come,” will award $10,000 and publication to a debut collection of poems. | Milkweed Editions
• The lineup for this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival (including Karl Ove Knausgaard, Joyce Carol Oates, Robin Coste Lewis, and more) has been announced; Colson Whitehead will receive the annual Best of Brooklyn Award, and Adrian Tomine and Rodrigo Corral will design the poster. | Brooklyn Book Festival

Also on Lit Hub: 

A look inside James Baldwin’s 1,884-page FBI file · 10 recommended works of literary horror · Julia Fierro on the secret, violent history of her childhood home · What would Kurt Vonnegut think of Donald Trump? · Ed Luce suggests five must-reads on the decline of Western democracy · Wallace Shawn: How should a person be? · When “interesting” isn’t interesting: Examining our over-reliance on a word that says not much at all · The case of mistaken identity behind Legends of the Fall · On Joan Didion’s move from fiction to memoir in grief · Matthew Sullivan on two decades of reading beside the woman he loves