The New York Times’s Casey Schwartz profiles author Yunte Huang, and talks with him about Daughter of the Dragon, his new book on the Chinese American film star Anna May Wong.
At Vulture, Isle McElroy, Maris Kreizman, Emma Alpern, and Jasmine Vojdani recommend some of the forthcoming books they’re looking forward to reading this fall, including new fiction from Teju Cole, Ed Park, Lexi Freiman, and more.
Writer Grace Byron talks to Study Hall about her recent essay at The Cut, “The False Gospel of Conversion Therapy.” Byron tells Daniel Spielberger, “ Story-telling is not our best or only political tool. It can be just as selfish as it can be communal. But I do hope others are able to see some cracks in the wall, some sort of light.”
The tech journalism site 404 Media has just launched. The publication, founded by former employees of Vice’s Motherboard, will be entirely reader-supported. In their “Welcome” post, founders Joseph Cox, Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, and Samantha Cole write: “Our reporting has previously shut down surveillance companies, introduced the world to deepfakes, got right-to-repair legislation passed, changed policies at major social media platforms including Reddit and Facebook, and got hundreds of millions of dollars of fines levied against some of the most significant companies in the world. At 404 Media, we intend to continue that work, only now, we will own it ourselves.” In yesterday’s New York Times article about 404, Koebler said the company would eventually have a newsletter and podcast.
In the latest episode of the Know Your Enemy podcast, hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell talk about fired Ron DeSantis staffer Nate Hochman, who appeared on the podcast in 2021. In the show notes, the hosts write, “The Hochman affair inspired some soul-searching on the part of your podcast hosts. Had we inadvertently exposed our audience to a neo-Nazi? Was our original December 2021 interview insufficiently combative—or too credulous, as many of our most vigilant listeners have suggested?”
The Paris Review has unpaywalled James Baldwin’s “Art of Fiction” interview from their archive. Reflecting in 1984 on what his experience with writing has taught him over time, Baldwin told his interviewer: “You learn how little you know. It becomes much more difficult because the hardest thing in the world is simplicity.”