Lit Hub Weekly: March 7 – 11, 2022

• “It is hard to imagine anyone writing a poem or a novel about this current moment, but someday they will.” Kate Tsurkan on how Ukrainian writers are contributing to the war effort. | Lit Hub Ukraine

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• Why are so many men still resistant to reading women? Mary Ann Sieghart digs into the literary authority gap. | Lit Hub

• “What does it look like, these novels ask, to take anything too seriously?” Tara Isabella Burton on the power of campus novels. | Lit Hub Criticism

• What kind of first draft should you write? Whatever kind you can, says Matt Bell. | Lit Hub Craft

• “The book, I prophesy, will get mixed but interested reviews.” On the centenary of Jack Kerouac’s birth, dive in to rarely seen archival material from his publisher. | Lit Hub History

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• NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory, Karen Joy Fowler’s Booth, Elizabeth Williamson’s Sandy Hook, and Amy Bloom’s In Love all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• “We are left to fight a war and to fill the giant information gap about Ukraine that still exists in the West.” Ostap Ukrainets reports on life during the war in Ukraine. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Adrienne Westenfeld considers the migration of novelists to Substack. | Esquire

• Lawmakers in Idaho are considering whether to allow prosecutors to criminally charge librarians for lending certain books to minors. | Boise State Public Radio

• Nina Li Coomes explores how Drive My Car pushes the limits of language with its use of sound and soundlessness. | The Atlantic

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• “They were at best akin to a Sharper Image where you could buy books by Ron Chernow and Brad Thor.” Alex Shephard writes an obituary for Amazon’s terrible bookstores. | The New Republic

• “One can never have too much Zora in one’s intellectual diet.” Gene Seymour considers the “mercurial audacity” of Zora Neale Hurson. | Bookforum

• Rachel Cordasco makes the case for the necessity of speculative fiction in translation. | Words Without Borders

• Yuliya Musakovska, Volodymyr Dibrova, and others weigh in with dispatches from Ukraine. | AGNI

• “Its length is often glorious—but it is also an admission of failure.” Tom Whyman on learning to love really long books. | Gawker

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• Chris Feliciano Arnold explores the Sesame Street songbook and parenting through despair. | The Believer

• “It’s not a question of if there will be more pain but when.” Chloe Benjamin on migraines and ambition. | The Cut

• Michael A. Gonzales on the undersung work and too-short life of Diane Oliver, who wrote short stories about the horrors of racism perpetrated on Black families in suburban America. | The Bitter Southerner

• Will Burns surveys the literature of the pub, from The Canterbury Tales to Lucky Jim and beyond. | The Baffler

• Clementine Thomas talks about running a food-centric bookstore and her favorite cookbooks. | Washingtonian

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Also on Lit Hub:

Sandra Oh on systemic racism in Hollywood •  Hanif Adburraqib on history’s most famous beefs • Why Ben Okri wrote a book for children • Contemporary Ukrainian poetry by Boris Khersonsky • Austin Kleon looks back on Steal Like an Artist  • Amal El-Mohtar on falling for Ursula K. Le Guin • When Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat took the art world by storm • Finding inspiration in the works of Willa Cather • On Renoir’s “fugitive pigments” • What really happened to Abu Zubaydah at Stare Kiejkuty? • Amanda Pellegrino on writing for TV versus writing a novel • How to write place when confronted with uniformity • Beyond the “missing girl” archetype • How the Inca used knots to tell stories • Reading about the Soviet past to understand Ukraine’s present • What makes a great opening line? • Considering the self-fulfilling prophecy of sexism • Azar Nafisi wants us to read more dangerously • On the life of Darryl Hunt before his wrongful imprisonment • How Rumi became a poet • What it means to find a true best friend • What does it look like to decenter whiteness in fiction? • Why we should pay attention to conspiracy theorists • Ousman Umar on surviving a journey across the Sahara • Decoding birdsong and elk calls • The unglamorous life of an editorial assistant with family troubles • On writing dreams •  A retelling of Kerouac’s funeral • Lessons in comedic timing from New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress • When Paris was a refuge for Russian artists and dissidents