LitHub Daily: May 27, 2016

TODAY: In 1819, Julia Ward Howe, a prominent American abolitionist and author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is born. 

• Going nowhere: Martin Seay’s book tour through America’s liminal spaces. | Literary Hub
• On superheroes and the myth of American power. | Literary Hub
• Miranda Beverly-Whittemore on the pleasures of plot and writing a bestseller. | Literary Hub
• Literature in a time of war: a reading list of Simone de Beauvoir, Hans Fallada, Marghanita Laski and more. | Literary Hub
• In honor of Short Story Month, stories by Alexandra Kleeman, Lauren Groff, Garth Greenwell, and 14 others. | Huffington Post
• Matthew Specktor on Eve Babitz, explainer of the “vaporous and bewildering American idea” that is Los Angeles. | Tin House
• Tony Tulathimutte on the “nine-month war of attrition to secure the original title of [his] book.”| The Paris Review
• On Kristen Hogan’s The Feminist Bookstore Movement, which provides “a history from the bottom-up rather than a female-adjusted Great Man style of history.” | The New Republic
• Emma Straub on being “rejected by every single person in publishing, in the world,” the quote-unquote Brooklyn book, and conflict aversion. | The New York Times
• “I really wanted to inhabit this woman’s skin, and I wanted it to feel very visceral.” Mona Awad on writing 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, cultural adjustments, and creative growth. | Hazlitt
• “Parenthood is not the enemy of anything; it’s the condition without which none of us would exist.” Rumaan Alam on being a writer and a father. | BuzzFeed
• Lesley Nneka Arimah on the limits of technology, the importance of reading widely (and smuttily), and My Little Pony. | Catapult

Also on Literary Hub: The literary genius of Kendrick Lamar · On the Mekong Review, and a burgeoning Cambodian literary scene · From Zoe Zolbrod’s The Telling

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