TODAY: In 1950, novelist Gloria Naylor is born.
- When you have no models to start with, how do you write a Saudi American novel free of stereotypes? Eman Quotah reflects on creating her own literary tradition. | Lit Hub
- Soledad Fox Maura asks if it’s finally time to ditch the label “domestic fiction.” | Lit Hub
- “Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?” adrienne maree brown on cancel culture and transformative justice. | Lit Hub
- A reading list to usher you through the history of artificial intelligence, from the Golden Age to… Roombas. | Lit Hub
- “There is throughout Alvin’s work an awareness that poetic speech is beyond reach; coming to the end of the mind, he found not a palm there but a brick wall.” James Geary on collecting the poems of Alvin Feinman. | Lit Hub
- White Noise, Jesus’ Son, Goodnight Moon, and more rapid-fire book recs from Jenny Offill. | Book Marks
- “I feel fine. Slightly bored, but fine.” Joan Didion is hanging in there, everyone. | TIME
- A look at the many lives of Ignazio Silone, author of “one of the great anti-facist novels of the twentieth century.” | Jacobin
- Charles Saunders, author of speculative fiction focused on Black heroes, has died at 73. | New York Times
- “Brecht knew that reality is corruptible, particularly when presented in emotional terms by skilled storytellers.” Considering the failed insurrection through the lens of Brecht. | Zócalo Public Square
- Get your first look at Anthony Doerr’s first novel since All the Light We Cannot See—Cloud Cuckoo Land will be on shelves in September. | EW
- “I’ve come to a place where I think cis readers can keep up.” Torrey Peters on writing about trans life. | Slate
- James Penner delves into Errol Morris’s new film, “a love story wrapped in an espionage novel, with LSD constantly blurring the viewer’s sense of historical truth and reality.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual events, featuring Joy Harjo, Rebecca Makkai, Jerald Walker, and more • Three poems by Alvin Feinman • Read a short story from Mary-Beth Hughes’s new collection, California.