TODAY: In 1957, playwright David Henry Hwang is born.
- “Poems r just less popular memes.” On the lines and lyrics that stick out in our mind. | Literary Hub
- How to solve a book emergency: what to do when you find yourself trapped without reading material. | Literary Hub
- The moral arc of N.K. Jemison’s universe bends toward apocalypse. | Literary Hub
- “Long before words like transgender and gender dysphoria even existed, Djuna Barnes put a trans woman at the heart of her dark masterpiece.” On one of the first trans characters in western fiction. | The Awl
- Ocean Vuong on speaking to phantoms, how art is like public transportation, and enacting queerness in language. | Harriet
- “They show me the jar of wet and purple pulp and like Sethe, I do not look away.” Returning to Beloved after a miscarriage. | Lenny
- He was my starter husband: A short story by Jennifer Haigh. | Electric Literature
- “Far too often, very ordinary phenomena like female sexual desire or the onset of puberty are elevated by male writers to something remarkable, frightening.” On the portrayal of teen girls in fiction. | The Guardian
- “In that desert, on the eve of the ground assault, as Warthog jets and tactical missiles slashed the sky, and as Republican Guard mobilized within striking distance of our compound, Breakfast’s complexity and humor, its polemic and timing and asterisk assholes were a revolution.” Odie Lindsey on receiving a care package of Vonnegut in a warzone. | The Millions
- The founders of new independent press Transit Books on crossing literary borders, addressing fraught issues in publishing, and being anti-limits. | Transit Books, Guernica
- Annie DeWitt on the sex lives of elderly people, bristling at the term “coming of age,” and the brutality of nature. | The Rumpus
Also on Literary Hub: Books making news this week: longlists, anthologies, and the underground railroad · Bethanne Patrick’s 5 beach reads for the dog days of August · The lard of her lifetime: “Chubby Minutes” from Leopoldine Core’s collection, When Watched
