June 9, 2025
Today, we’re celebrating 15 years of The Common, considering the politics of hair in America, and appreciating Addy Walker, the first Black American Girl doll!
On Lit Hub dot com:
Kei Lim talks to Gabriele Wilson about 15 years of The Common through its covers and crafting the magazine’s visual identity. | Lit Hub Design
“I spend the hours-long dream chanting the line, determined to remember it, because the part of me that is awake, that is aware, knows I will want it later.” Hala Alyan explores displacement, trauma, and memory. | Lit Hub Memoir
Jaha Nailah Avery on the significance of Addy Walker, the first Black American Girl doll. | Lit Hub History
Race in the United States, tresses as culture, and the charged meaning of hair in 19th-century America. | Lit Hub Politics
Susan Gubar examines the life and work of Marianne Moore, America’s unexpected celebrity poet. | Lit Hub Biography
“I see it more as a constant conversation between my two mother tongues.” On the powerful joy of writing in two languages. | Lit Hub Craft
Miriam Gershow recommends high school novels (for adult readers!) by Zoe Heller, Emily St. James, Jim Shepherd and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Erica Stern considers a traumatic birth and the many that came before: “Was there something she was afraid of, a contaminant that might transfer from me to her if she were to look at me directly?” | Lit Hub Health
“Running with Gen had been like keeping pace with a streaking deer. Emily was thirsty and annoyed and her body felt like a hot water bottle.” Read from Marie Rutkoski’s new novel, Ordinary Love. | Lit Hub Fiction
From around the internet:
What’s a reader to do with books that are loaded with arsenic? | The GuardianÂ
Sarah Viren reports on the firing of a pro-Palestinian professor and the murky future of academic freedom. | The New York Times Magazine.Â
Andrew Koenig looks at a new book that explores a literary theory of animals. | Los Angeles Review of Books
“These are the final words of Airless Spaces, but the book is ouroboric: only physics prevents you turning the page and finding the first again..” Emmett Rensin asks, what happened to Shualmith Firestone? | The Point
On Allan Kaprow’s “Time Pieces” and the art of a heartbeat. | The MIT Press Reader
Leif Randt and Vincenzo Latronico aren’t sure if they’ve ever met. | Interview
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