LitHub Daily: July 5, 2016

TODAY: In 1972, writer and prolific book trailer maker Gary Shteyngart is born [right]. (Still from his Little Failure trailer). 

• The genius of William Shawn, and the invention of The New Yorker: David Remnick on the post-war evolution of an American literary institution. | Literary Hub
• How to write a short story: Helen Phillips and Matthew Vollmer on the art of the form. | Literary Hub
• On the comedy of history, and the importance of a good joke: Christopher Bram finds humor in the greatest literature. | Literary Hub
• There would be no fourth of July without the Iroquois nation, from Bev Sellars’s Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival. | Literary Hub
• Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel died on Saturday at age 87. | The New York Times
• “He lies, bullies, menaces, dishes it out but can’t seem to take it, exhibits such a muddy understanding of certain American principles… that he might be a seventeenth-century Austrian prince time-transported here to mess with us.” George Saunders attends a Trump rally. | The New Yorker
• “Try to think bigger than you ever have/or had courage enough to do:” Alice Walker responds, in verse, to Jesse Williams’ BET Speech. | Vulture
• Lidudumalingani has been awarded the Caine Prize for his story “Memories We Lost.” | Caine Prize
• Freedom is not a settled thing: Dave Eggers on America’s continued need to welcome the world’s oppressed. | The Guardian
• “In a literary marketplace where the very image of a woman is seen as antithetical to literature, Ferrante’s covers take an important stand.” On the female-oriented covers of Elena Ferrante. | The Atlantic
• Chigozie Obioma on surpassing his literary dreams, exploring fear, and moving from a storyteller to a writer. | The Literary Show Project
• On Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov’s “exquisite paean to memory itself.” | Humanities
• “Remember: none of this is really happening.” A short story by Jess Row. | n+1

Also on Literary Hub: On the battle to desegregate the nation’s libraries · Books making news this week: freaks, geeks, and some crazy, crazy love · Our city: From Christopher Hebert’s Angels of Detroit

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