Format: Online Only

The National Endowment for the Arts opens applications for grants to arts organizations hit hard by the pandemic; Semaj Brown, poet laureate of Flint, brings poetry to the city; indie booksellers recommend summer reading; and other stories.

Kristen Radtke shares a graphic short on family, loneliness, and aging; Kazuo Ishiguro muses on the nature of human beings; Wole Soyinka discusses returning to the novel form; and other stories.

Conversations about race and representation in the audiobook industry; Publishers Lunch introduces “a fresh look and improved coding”; Amazon warehouse in the U.K. regularly destroys thousands of unsold items; and other stories.

Clint Smith writes about the commemoration of Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas; Mikyla Bruder prepares to take the helm at Amazon Publishing; Yan Lianke describes the “revolutionary language” that propels his novel Hard Like Water; and other stories.