Amanda Oliver, author of Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library, recounts some incidents from her years working in the DC library system, cautioning against the romanticization of public libraries and their equalizing role in society. - Electric Literature
In theory, the conference was still happening, but it wasn’t clear whether anyone would be in attendance, or what they’d be doing while there. Who, I wondered, risks death for the conference of a dying profession? - Washington Post
Lauren Hough's Leaving Isn't The Hardest Thing was a nominee for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Memoir — until this week, when Lambda disqualified her for defending a fellow author being attacked on Twitter for alleged transphobia. Laura Miller looks into the matter and points out the lesson. - Slate
Most of the time, when we translate something, we think about the act of translation as changing the meaning that comes from one language and conveying it in another language. But the act of translation, particularly in writing, becomes complicated if there is technically no written equivalent of ASL. - LitHub
Art Spiegelman: "This is the most Orwellian version of society I've ever lived in." Margaret Atwood: "They're playing woke snowflakery back." Hamid Ismailov: "I'm the most widely published Uzbek, yet nobody can mention my books. It's a total ban of my name, of activity, of books, of existence." - The Guardian
The progressive wins are a development that looked unlikely as the right wing, often through organizations with connections to wealthy Republican donors, has introduced bill after bill in states across the country. - The Guardian
The book, Marvel Comics No. 1, published in 1939, is so valuable because it is known as the pay copy, in which the publisher recorded the payments he owed to the illustrators, said Stephen Fishler, the chief executive of ComicConnect, an online comic auction house. - The New York Times
Maybe because people love them so much. No, seriously, what's up with all of the lobbying against state legislatures trying to give libraries what they need? Follow the (large amounts of) money. - Sludge
The murder of George Floyd, and the protests, prompted her to rethink her own responsibilities. She says, "There are generations of freedom fighters who have been doing this work without the internet, without being spotlighted." - The Guardian (UK)
A book of short stories by a young Cambodian American who died before his book came out, a first novel about coming of age in the South, and a book that explores the long shadow of slavery across the history of the U.S. - among others. - Los Angeles Times
His 1992 novel Snow Crash is the source of the trem "metaverse"; his 1999 Cryptonomicon basically predicted cryptocurrency. With fans from Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates to Peter Thiel to Sergey Brin, "Neal Stephenson might be the most influential novelist among business tycoons since Ayn Rand." - The Baffler
“Thinking about how cultural heritage survives seems like a useful thing to do, because right now—among many other things—that’s one of the important things threatened by things like climate change.” - Scientific American
The copious notes the author made the springtime arrivals of flowers and birds provided valuable data to a team of Boston University scientists investigating precisely how much warmer and earlier spring is becoming in eastern Massachusetts. - JSTOR Daily
Molly McGhee, an assistant editor at the Macmillan sci-fi imprint Tor Books, just saw her first acquisition hit the NYT Bestseller List at #3 — and she's quit after being denied a promotion, citing "the invisibility of the junior employee's workload" as well as the low pay. - The New York Times
