LitHub Daily: August 5, 2016

TODAY: In 1934, American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer Wendell Berry is born. 

• 20 writers from around the world on the Olympics. | Literary Hub
• Six rules for creating an oral history from the original chroniclers of punk. | Literary Hub
• A very rare book by one of America’s all-time great athletes: visiting Jim Thorpe‘s $10,000 History of the Olympics. | Literary Hub
• Nell Zink’s plan to reform the Olympics, which involves an unfixed location, aggregation, and tragedy. | New Republic
• Retracing the 1927 road trip that cemented the friendship between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. | Oxford American
• Megan Abbott on “the moment when writing went from seeming a remote kind of magic to something one created—built—word by word, diligent effort by diligent effort.” | Catapult
• On The Nest and Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, two new additions to the canon of anxious rich people. | The New Yorker
• Kent Russell visits the “famously gorgeous-yet-also-rank-as-hell” corpse flower. | The Paris Review
• On the Matilda Effect, the continued overlooking of women’s achievements, and the female figures history forgot. | Hazlitt
• A conversation between summer people: On the homonymous short stories of Shirley Jackson and Kelly Link. | Longreads
• We tell ourselves stories in order to live, quite literally: Studies have found that reading books is tied to a longer life. | The New York Times

Also on Literary Hub: Otto Penzler’s 5 crime and mystery picks for the dog days of summer · Graphic designer Julian Alexander on 50 Cent, Marlon James, and what makes a good cover · To infinity and beyond: from Stephen Metcalfe’s The Practical Navigator

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