LitHub Daily: August 25, 2016

TODAY: In 2002, Australian author and poet Dorothy Hewett dies. 

• Who am I? Benjamin Rybeck on trying to figure out if he’s a writer and a bookseller. | Literary Hub
• There is no secret to writing about people who do not look like you: Brandon Taylor on the importance of empathy as craft. | Literary Hub
• Why pleasures should never be guilty, from Valley of the Dolls to bonkbusters (yes, bonkbusters). | Literary Hub
• “What I’m seeing here is that I’m not alone in being tired of medieval Europe and phallic spaceships.” An interview with N. K. Jemisin, the first black writer to win a Hugo Award for best novel. | The New York Times
• Tim Murphy on the under-narrativization of the treatment story of AIDS, re-finding fiction, and heroism. | Interview Magazine
• “It was important to me that this book be able to speak to that audience even if that audience does not want to hear the message, but then also at the same time speak to black Americans, or Americans of color, or queer Americans, people who may feel like their lives are valued less.” An interview with Jesmyn Ward. | Bookforum
• The Science Fiction Age is not over: On sci-fi’s “enduring afterlife in postrevolutionary Cuba.” | New Republic
• “I had art, and the ability to design fictional characters on which I could project my emotional turmoil.” Chelsea Martin on processing real-life drama through writing. | Catapult
• Artists “represented on both gallery walls and bookshelves:” On the intersection of literature and visual art. | Electric Literature
• There is much more to true crime than penny dreadfuls and blood-spattered paperbacks: On the history of an “officially hot” genre. | JSTOR Daily
• “I’m hungry, I’m voraciously waiting for these books, so if I can create some of that sense in myself maybe I can create it in readers too.” An interview with Will Evans, the founder of Deep Vellum. | The Rumpus

Also on Literary Hub: Visiting the world’s foremost (and only) bookstore devoted to Churchill, Chartwell Booksellers · Five reasons why writers should move to Columbus · Farewell to it, and good luck to it: from Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies.

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