Lit Hub Weekly: September 7 – 10, 2021

• “All the while I kept thinking, ‘This changes everything, the world will never be the same.’” Rachel Cobb on photographing New York City on the morning of 9/11. | Lit Hub Photography

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

• The late artist Winfred Rembert captures a peaceful civil rights demonstration in the Jim Crow South that ended in mayhem. | Lit Hub History

• “God forgive me if this letter is ever opened by mistake.” An, ahem, steamy letter from Henry Miller to Anais Nin. | Lit Hub

• Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Lauren Groff’s Matrix, and Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks

• 63 crime novels to cozy up with this fall, recommended by the CrimeReads editors. | CrimeReads

• Claudia Rankine explores Beyoncé’s radical reimagining of what it means to be a pop icon. | Harper’s Bazaar

• Can Salman Rushdie’s forthcoming, Substack-published novella revive serialized fiction? | The New Republic

• “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

• 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

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

• “It will hate bunk.” Read The New Yorker’s original prospectus. | Gothamist

• Joy Harjo discusses her new memoir, Native history, and her childhood reading habits. | NPR

• Why are news reporters so skilled at writing crime novels? | Inside Hook

• Lauren Groff considers the books that have made an impact on her life. | Elle

• “Spontaneity is learning.” Leanne Shapton on visual knowledge and the power of browsing. | Curbed

• Samuel Moyn discusses post-9/11 hysteria, US imperialism, and the pretext of humanitarianism. | The Drift

• Meet Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s first Black poet laureate. | NPR

• Kayleb Rae Candrilli breaks down the meaning of acts of creative recovery under capitalism. | Poetry Foundation

• “Even though it’s a picture that Chicagoans might not find flattering, I think it’s an honest portrayal.” Sandra Cisneros on writing about her hometown. | Chicago Magazine

Also on Lit Hub:

Lauren Groff in conversation with Rebecca Makkai • How New Yorkers turned to poetry after 9/11 • On the race to a COVID-19 vaccine • How a hospice nurse helped change the course of the Miss America pageant • Hayley Mills on missing out on the part of Lolita • Remembering the humble origins of Saveur • Money, priorities, and the promise of an American childhood • On the “enchanting and terrifying” worlds of Ben Okri’s fiction • Dara Horn (reluctantly) revisits The Merchant of Venice • How to deliver a baby in the aftermath of a hurricane • Jill Louise Busby on the problem(s) of the writing residency industrial complex • Annabel Abbs considers the legacy of women hikers who blazed their own trails • On the young Indigenous basketball players who challenged colonial hegemony in Montana • How the mushroom we know from Disney movies earned its fame • An expedition across the “mysterious, inhospitable white void” of Antarctica • What we get wrong about borderline personality disorder • María Amparo Escandón on becoming a student of LA  • Sasha Sagan on the sea-change of our news cycle since 9/11 • On Tolstoy’s changing notions about brutality and war • Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez on white supremacy in higher education • Fictionalizing the Ritchie Boys, German-Jewish refugees who went undercover during WWII • Dawn Turner chronicles her sprawling family history in Chicago • Vanessa Bohns on our unbearable fear of social embarrassment • Joe Woolhead on documenting the chaos of the fallen Twin Towers