Friday Lit Links — Week of June 8
News, Reviews, and Interviews
Rivka Galchen gives a fascinating account of the Oklahoma teacher strike of 2018. Galchen’s father was a professor at the University of Oklahoma, which is also WLT’s home base.
This week marked the passing of legendary Croatian novelist Daša Drndić. It was only this past January that we reviewed her acclaimed novel, Belladonna. The loss is immense.
Former Neustadt Prize juror and WLT contributor Porochista Khakpour has a new book out called Sick, which chronicles her years-long struggle with Lyme disease.
Speaking of which, Khakpour is featured on this list from Bustle, which compiles the seventeen best nonfiction books coming out this month.
The Academy of American Poets is celebrating LGBTQ month with a rotating selection of verse. Of note are pieces by 1976 Neustadt Laureate Elizabeth Bishop, as well as Joseph O. Legaspi, who guest-edited our Philippine-American lit section in the March 2018 issue.
ArabLit has further put together a list of five queer fictions to peruse online.
The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry is a tremendous addition to an all-star lineup of staff writers. Her acerbic yet moving pieces on pop culture tell us all we need to know about ourselves in this free-for-all day and age. Recently, she commented on the bizarre (yet conflictingly moving) tale of Kim Kardashian pressing Donald Trump for the clemency of Alice Marie Johnson.
Ed Yong of the Atlantic charts out the ways in which vocal minority groups can reshape the national political scene.
For our readers in the NYC area, photographer Justine Kurland’s Girl Pictures will be on display throughout the month at the Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery. The exhibit stages scenes of actors portraying runaway girls, taken between 1997–2002.
Fun Finds and Inspiration
The Seattle Times gives a rundown on the right game plan when attending a writing conference.
Aditi Natasha Kini offers a defiant rebuke to “the myth of the male genius.”
Electric Lit’s Yuxi Lin digs into all the ways in which an eighteenth-century romance novel warped her ideas of the realities of love.
And last but not least, Wendi Aarons at McSweeney’s offers up this biting send-up of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, imaging the antiauthoritarian Bueller as a regular working stiff.
