LitHub Daily: June 12, 2015

TODAY: In 1929, Anne Frank is born; in 1942, she is given a diary for her birthday. 

• Ray Barfield on being both doctor and novelist: “The deepest moments of being a doctor and the deepest moments of being a writer feel similar to me.” | Literary Hub
• “Because I’m a writer… I could either shut up, that’s the end, get on with dying. Or, get gripped, which is what happened.” Jenny Diski on writing with terminal cancer, without clichés. | The New York Times Magazine
• Due to avant-garde minstrel shows, this spring spawned forth the cruellest months for poetry. | Asian American Writers’ Workshop
• As the European Games begin in Azerbaijan, jailed journalist Khadija Ismayilova manages to smuggle a letter out of prison: “I have been punished for speaking out from jail, placed into solitary confinement, and prevented from seeing my family and lawyers.” | PEN America
• “The book is part of the poem. Because you have little trees in the paper that are holding the poem up, and little rivers going through the paper, encouraging the poem to flow.” An interview with Juan Felipe Herrera, our new Poet Laureate. | LA Times
• Anne Roiphe does not need your admiration, shares what 50 years of writing has taught her. | Publishers Weekly
• Also in aspirational aging: Lawrence Ferlinghetti is still publishing “literature that represents both hope and resistance and the broader possibilities of a just world” at age 96. | NPR
• A visit to J.P. Donleavyland, where it is “yet conceivable for a man to travel by steamer.” | The New Yorker
• “I do not want students to think they can’t be writers or engaged in literature simply because they don’t see themselves being portrayed in their coursework.” On the importance of teaching diverse literature. | The Toast
• Carmen Boullosa on the imaginary value of Texas, over-oxygenation, and the appeal of becoming a cowperson. | Entropy

Also on Literary Hub: Michele Filgate on our constant struggle to find the perfect place to read · Mia Alvar on the legends of the white lady

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