TODAY: In 1941, John Edgar Wideman, the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice, is born.
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Kari Nixon considers the xenophobic legacy of The Hot Zone, “one of the most dangerous books ever to become a bestseller.” | Lit Hub Politics
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Rivka Galchen recommends reading as a remedy for writer’s block, anxiety, rage, boredom, and… allergies. | Lit Hub Questionnaire
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“I am thinking of the place I grew up in and the self that was formed there, the version of me who knows that a body is meat but also someone’s child.” Akwaeke Emezi on growing up in Aba. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Laura Lindstedt wonders if the rise of audiobooks might change how authors—either consciously or subconsciously—write books. | Lit Hub
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“There’s enough room in space for everyone.” Lavie Tidhar considers the unsung history of Jewish writers who pioneered science fiction. | Lit Hub
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How Henry Alsberg went from rock bottom to directing “the most ambitious literary project ever attempted”—the Federal Writers Project. | Lit Hub History
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“I’m lonely but I’m writing songs for my first album, and songs are a lonely person’s occupation; songs are ghosts.” Sinead O’Connor remembers her early days in London. | Lit Hub Music
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“Archivists are always racing the clock and crossing their fingers.” On the precious, precarious work of preserving queer histories in the Pacific Northwest. | Atlas Obscura
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Stephen Kessler considers what we lose when poetry becomes more career path than spiritual vocation. | LARB
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Brian Broome contemplates the expectations of Black masculinity and how he was inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks. | Shelf Awareness
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Bruce Owens Grimm, Miguel M. Morales, and Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini discuss finding and fostering fat and queer and fat and trans voices. | The Rumpus
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“I thank you for being educated.” Read Kurt Vonnegut’s words for the class of 1994. | Lapham’s Quarterly
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Sean Illing asks Jarvis R. Givens of Harvard University about the most effective ways to teach the history of American racism. | Vox
Also on Lit Hub: Why we’re susceptible to the toxic allure of cults • Read a poem by Chet’la Sebree • Read from Karen Tucker’s debut novel, Bewilderness