Reader's Room covers the month's speculative fiction, science and technology. In this edition we talk about how to grow literature in the desert, the very real ways words can threaten life, as well as Kawamata Chiaki’s novel Death Sentences.

Show links:

• Nevada's Black Mountain Institute
• The Believer magazine
• The Believer Festival
• BMI's City of Asylum program.
• Progenitor of Surrealism, André Breton
• The Surrealist game, Exquisite Corpse
• And the Twitter thread where I talk my way though an editing problem. (Warning: Several swear words.)

Suggestions, comments, or subscribe to the newsletter at ReadSteven.com