TODAY: In 1855, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published.
- Dispatches from writers in America: Tracy K. Smith’s letter to Black America • From Newark Nyle Fort writes to his nephew about trauma and uprising. | Lit Hub
- Chrome-plated pistols and pink polos: Rebecca Solnit on the face of elite panic in the USA. | Lit Hub Politics
- Arrested for wearing a bathing suit: Howard Means on Annette Kellerman, and life as an early female swimmer. | Lit Hub
- Road fiction, historical fantasy, and modern romance: all the crime, mystery, and thrillers you need to read this July. | CrimeReads
- Jonathan Dee on David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, Veronica Roth on Sophie Mackintosh’s Blue Ticket, Hari Kunzru on Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Eight Black publishing professionals speak out about their experiences in the industry. | The New York Times
- “Asian immigrants and their descendants have been offered the opportunity by both Black people and white people to choose sides in the Black-white racial divide, and we have far too often chosen the white side.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on the trap of the “model minority” myth. | TIME
- George Orwell was a police officer in British India and quit after five years. That experience shaped his views about restrictions on freedom of speech and individualism. | Slate
- Is this series—about “a sentient world suffering under corporate and military exploitation, and how one disabled woman began to fight back”—the best SF climate fiction you’ve never heard of? | Tor
- “The proliferation of ‘Black Lists’ renders a rich repository of intellectual labor into the equivalent of a trash heap of algorithms.” Book critic Rich Benjamin on the pros and cons of anti-racism reading lists. | The Intercept
- Jennifer Egan is writing a “companion volume” to A Visit from the Goon Squad, which turns 10 this month. | EW
- R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell are coming out with a fiction anthology on kink. | O, The Oprah Magazine
- Phyllis Wheatley, Lucy Terry Prince, David Walker—these were some of the many Black writers who shaped Boston’s literary landscape in its earliest days. | The Boston Musical Intelligencer
- Here are 11 essential books to read by Black Canadian authors. | Now Toronto
- Rudolfo Anaya, “godfather” of Chicano literature and author of Bless Me, Ultima, has died at 82. | The Washington Post
- “There’s something re-energising about connecting to feeling, even if that feeling is pain.” Black British poets on the revolutionary power of poetry. | The Guardian
- The details of The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s divorce include allegations of extramarital affairs, a clandestine children’s book, and “several Friesian horses.” | AP
- Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced John Prine as the state’s first honorary poet laureate. | Rolling Stone
- “For eel thou art, to eel returnest.” On the uncanny figure of the eel in literature and art. | The Paris Review
Also on Lit Hub:
David A. Taylor on how the government supported the arts during the (first) Great Depression • Missing the drama of sports? James Tate Hill has some audiobook recommendations to fill the competitive void • Heather Lende on running for office in Haines, Alaska, population: 2,500 • Filmmaker Sara Fattahi talks to Pamela Cohn about telling the stories of war from a woman’s perspective • Emily Owens on banners, thanks-giving, and grief • For the continuing beautification of your isolation bookshelves, we turn to the best book covers of June • Petru Popescu on living through polio and coronavirus • In praise of the dream-logic of speculative fiction • Shayla Lawson on the colonization of poetry • Shannon Reed recalls the lowest moment of her teaching career • The universe has signed off on this month’s astrological book recommendations • Eric Holthaus on the inequalities at the heart of the climate crisis • On the kinship between poets and mathematicians • In search of the open-armed America of 1975 • Writing advice from Nabokov • “Jaboozie Turns Me On to Deep Cuts.” A prose poem by Eric Gansworth for the Fourth of July • Revisiting John Hersey’s groundbreaking “Hiroshima” • Beverly Gray on The Graduate author Charles Webb’s unexpected life of charity • At long last, it’s time to move past the myth of the clutch swing voter • “Three Liberties: Past, Present, Yet to Come”: A poem by Julia Alvarez
Best of Book Marks:
Sarah Neilson recommends 13 of the most anticipated books by indigenous authors for the second half of 2020 • Moby-Dick, The Golden Notebook, The Call of the Wild, and more rapid-fire book recs from Andrew Martin • “She looked like the great-grandmother of every whore in the world”: in honor of James M. Cain’s 128th birthday this week, here’s a 1934 review of The Postman Always Rings Twice • New titles from J. Courtney Sullivan, Sophie Mackintosh, Kevin Kwan, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and more all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
New on CrimeReads:
Olivia Rutigliano on punishment, fate and redemption in the greatest summer film of all time • Sulari Gentill on how crime fiction trains us for crisis • Neil Nyren revisits the dark, poetic crime fiction and iconic detectives of P.D. James • Lizzy Steiner has all the true crime podcasts you need to listen to this summer • Lydia Kang uses historical fiction to journey into medicine’s long, messy past • Katherine St. John recommends all the bad vacation thrillers you need to feel better about being stuck at home • Leah Konen discovers the women authors behind Hitchcock’s masterpieces • Kit Frick on the rise of the true crime podcast novel • 10 new crime books coming out this week • Sarah Hilary knows that Patricia Highsmith is preying on our minds