Lit Hub Weekly: June 15 - 19, 2020

• “I went quiet the very moment everyone else seemed to get louder.” Brandon Taylor on managing private anxiety during a very public pandemic. | Lit Hub
• What is an escapist read in 2020? Deborah Shapiro suggests some fiction for the unsettling moods of summer. | Lit Hub
• “This’ll hurt me more.” A poem by Camille T. Dungy. | Lit Hub
• Before the uprising, comes the work: Rebecca Solnit on the decades of activism that leads to sudden historic change. | Lit Hub Politics
• Sigrid Nunez on Garth Greenwell, Colm Tóibín on Edoardo Albinati, Parul Sehgal on Machado de Assis, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
• “Our very existence has been outlawed, criminalized, medicalized.” James Polchin gives us a queer true crime reading list. | CrimeReads
• When will publishing reckon with the “conservative publishing industrial complex”? | The New Republic
• Black literature encompasses far more than politics: A case for literary explorations of joy. | Harper’s Bazaar
• “For half a century, the particulars have been held close by executors, smoothed over by editors, and justified by exegetes.” On the racism of Flannery O’Connor. | The New Yorker
• A new literary prize is meant to provide support to BIPOC writers in the UK. | The Bookseller
• The legacy of Dickens fanfic is nearly as long and storied as the legacy of the man himself. | Scroll
• Author Janie Chang recounts the perilous effort to safeguard one of the most important texts in Chinese literature, the Siku Quanshu, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. | TIME
• Still don’t know why you should capitalize “Black” (and not “white”)? Here’s an explainer from the Columbia Journalism Review. | CJR
• Reni Eddo-Lodge is the first Black British author to top the UK’s book charts after interest surged in her 2017 book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. | The Guardian
• To fix racial disparities in book advances, Maris Kreizman argues, the publishing industry should start by paying assistants more. | LA Times
• “There was a lot of living going on; a lot of black life in all its quotidian glory. And it was glorious.” Ayana Mathis on Black joy amid the protests. | Rolling Stone
• Jericho Brown, Carmen Maria Machado, and Thoman Page McBee reflect on what Pride means today. | The New York Times
• “Black readers need to see themselves in narratives outside of racism, slavery, Jim Crow, police brutality.” On publishing’s commodification of Black pain. | Tor.com
• In celebration of Dublin’s literary magic. | National Geographic
• A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously to rescind the Literary Landmark status of Confederate president Jefferson Davis’ house in Mississippi. | Book Riot
• On the black women librarians who were making anti-racist reading lists during WWII. | Washington Post

Also on Lit Hub:

Read an excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s posthumously published novel, Juneteenth • Tara Isabella Burton presents a reading list on the search for deeper meaning in times of despair • Garrett Peck on a(nother) decade from hell: the first of the 21st century • Is Ball Four the greatest baseball memoir ever written? On the role of scientific data in climate literature • Letter from Houston: Daniel Peña on the Black and Brown voices bringing light to America • How Lit Hub editor and debut novelist Emily Temple learned to stop worrying and love the list • Chris Green on creating a collective poem in response to Chicago gun violence—with 100 poets’ voices • Sanaë Lemoine finds lessons in solitude from French cinema • Willow Curry on the relationship between art and action • Let us now praise Juliet Stevenson, brilliant audiobook narrator • Documenting ten days in New York during the Black Lives Matter protests: a photo essay by Rachel Cobb • Stephen Rebello, in praise of Valley of the Dolls, irresistible trainwreck • Readings in Black history and joy, from Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Robin Coste Lewis, Fred Moten, and more • Aaron Robertson: thinking of Black families, together and apart, on Juneteenth • Harmony Holiday on America’s history of policing Black music • Laura Briggs on America’s long history of imprisoning children • In which Irina Dumitrescu manages to vanquish pandemic distraction long enough to write about it

Best of Book Marks:

Geek Love, The Secret History, Giovanni’s Room, and more rapid-fire book recs from The Lightness author Emily Temple • Sheila Kohler recommends five short novels with water at the heart of the drama, from The Talented Mr. Ripley to Lord of the Flies • Each of these five acclaimed audiobook narrators has received AudioFile’s Golden Voice Lifetime Achievement Award • Animorphs, JK Rowling, Deacon King Kong, and more bantered about in The Week in Books LIVE • New titles from Joseph O’Connor, Emily Temple, Max Brooks, and Paul Preston all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

New on CrimeReads:

Marlowe Benn on the feminist mysteries of Carolyn Heilbrun • June’s best debut crime and mystery fiction • Lee Randall on the history of Perry Mason and his restless creator • Shane Mawe on the mostly forgotten Irish mystery writer at the center of Golden Age detective fiction • Olivia Rutigliano celebrates Flavia de Luce and the English village mystery • Molly Odintz rounds up 10 physicians who also write crime fiction • Gerard Koeppel with the high-seas murder that baffled the world • India’s most celebrated film director was also a bestselling crime novelist • Chris McGinley on Virginia Kellogg, the forgotten screenwriter behind a string of classic noirs • Sarah Weinman asks, can you really celebrate Edgar Allan Poe’s work from his life?