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Lit Hub Daily

“Driving around the mountain roads, I could hear the quiet around me, and it sounded like the foreboding, slinky, synthesizer-filled theme song to Twin Peaks.” Stephen Kurczy visits the “Log Lady” of West Virginia’s infamous electromagnetic “Quiet Zone.” | Lit Hub

Why read agonizing books? Tracey Lange makes the case for messy, emotional family stories. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

Robert Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn discuss The Epic of Gilgamesh, their album collaboration, and looking into the abyss. | Lit Hub 

Charif Majdalani considers the paradoxes of Lebanon, where the civil war led to building projects more destructive than the war itself. | Lit Hub History

“Her style is not simplistic, but, rather, beautifully simple.” Sophie Hannah celebrates the literary Agatha Christie. | CrimeReads

The Scarlet Letter, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Bastard Out of Carolina, and more rapid-fire book recs from Margot Mifflin. | Book Marks

American policing is operating exactly as it was designed to, writes Philip V. McHarris: “a violent tool of race and class control.” | Lit Hub Politics

War of the electric cars: How General Motors responded to Elon Musk’s plucky little startup. | Lit Hub Tech

Michael Knox Beran talks to Andrew Keen about the rise and fall of WASP culture. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

“Almost everybody has main character syndrome.” Kristen Arnett discusses how to use humor, understanding a character’s psychology, and the “scary” parts of writing a book. | The Creative Independent

Tamiko Beyer considers the radical power of poetry and its ability to help dismantle white supremacy and capitalism. | Harriet

“The campus is something of a microcosm of the world.” Mona Awad on reading Shakespeare and power dynamics in education. | Interview Magazine

T Kira Madden reflects on a lifelong relationship with horses and the process of “reclaiming something by dropping the reins, letting go.” | Refinery29

Suchitra Vijayan on the power of literary nonfiction, new possibilities of Indian American literature, neoliberal politics, and the importance of supporting underrepresented stories. | The Rumpus

“There are benefits to not knowing the rules. In college and my career, I didn’t know not to knock so I learned to knock louder.” Melissa Scholes Young on fostering camaraderie between first-generation faculty and first-generation students. | The Atlantic

Philip Lopate considers the Silver Age of essays. | The Paris Review

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How Nadia Owusu discovered the story she needed to tell, on Thresholds. 

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Why nature writing makes for essential reading, on Reading Women.

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Harriet Evans reads from The Beloved Girls, on The Literary Salon.

Fiction authors don’t make money—but maybe they could. According to The Novelleist, an author could release one chapter a week, charge $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. And Elle Griffin is about to try it.

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