Literature

This Anonymous Caller Is Not a Metaphor for Her Despair Chris Vanjonack Share article “Going Up” by Chris Vanjonack It’s the middle of the night when the Speaker first calls, and the timing is awful. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m., for one thing, and Kate teaches first thing in the morning, but what’s worse is that

The following coming-of-age novels by African women authors are shaped by an understanding of the deep and complex relationships between women. In these works, the individual path of the traditional bildungsroman narrator is transformed into a dual path involving two (or more) young women at the cusp of self-realization. Kinship and sisterhood mean something bigger

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of More Happy Love by Joanna Pearson, which will be published on May 18, 2027 by Bloomsbury. You can pre-order your copy here. Read “The Oracle” in Recommended Reading to get a sneak preview! “Exquisite writer” (Julia Phillips), psychiatrist, and conjurer of the uncanny Joanna Pearson returns

He Was My Father by Hannah Levy When I get the call, I’m sitting cross-legged on a golf course in the redwoods, perched on one of those artificial mounds of grass. It’s the only place where I have reception in this small town. I look up and the evening light moves through the trees like

When It Gets Hot the Block Gets Loud Bed-Stuy Ode Click to enlarge Parentheticals I have, from time to time, been suspectedof goodness. Thankfully, being human,it’s a difficult reputationto maintain. Exposed as someone who cutsin line, gossips incessantly, takesthe larger slice for myself, I’m freefrom sainthood. It’s expectedstill, of course, that I will sufferindignities with

For several years, I’ve enjoyed Stacey Yu’s videos about literary fiction on TikTok. On a particularly cozy, intellectual corner of the platform, she spotlights forgotten classics, works in translation, and contemporary novels—particularly those with elegant, careful prose. So when Yu announced that she would be releasing her debut novel, Kitten, this summer, I had no

The Barn Manager’s Grief Is Hotter Than Foreplay Genevieve Plunkett Share article An excerpt from The Lonely Girl’s Vegetable Patch by Genevieve Plunkett I met Tristan at Grandview Stable, where he was training me to take over for him as barn manager. Tristan had recently had his heart broken. The woman responsible, who was seventeen

We usually think of the writer as a solitary being, whereas if you actually look at the record, books spring up from complex ecosystems. As the great writer Juan Rulfo said when questioned about his inability to publish a new book, “My uncle died.” Meaning, all of his stories came from his uncle. So books

January, a Loss of Signs by Kira Homsher I.  January. The dog and I have both injured our left knees. He tore his cranial cruciate ligament playing in my parents’ muddy backyard on Christmas day. I don’t know when, or how, I hurt mine. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with it, either. I only

A Frozen Bird Too Beautiful to Bury Our Bodies Are Owl Bodies My mother was walking in a storm when she saw it face-up in the snow. She knelt down. It wasn’t breathing. She gathered it close. Saw-whet owls are among the smallest North American species, often in danger of being hunted by larger owls.

Poet Nyla Matuk’s debut novel, Leila and Khaled, centers the reality of being Palestinians under Israeli occupation and in diaspora. It is a story of discovering love and beauty amidst dispossession, and how that can be an act of resistance. Leila is a Palestinian Canadian film scholar who visits Occupied Palestine as part of an

When I entered the Zoom call with Marlon James, he had just put rice on the stove—cooking for a niece and nephew who are, by his own account, “totally unimpressed” by whatever their uncle does. Booker Prize, Time 100, American Book Award, doesn’t matter, they just want to be fed. So 30 seconds into our

His Daughter’s Poetry Is His Midlife Crisis Anna Reeser Share article “Phillip Whitney” by Anna Reeser His life as Phillip Whitney began with a stitch in his chest the night Charlotte said she wanted to focus on her poetry. There she was, his daughter, in a silky button-down shirt and long earrings, sitting across the

There was a proverb I came across once that’s stuck with me: “If brothers were such a good idea, God would have given himself one.” Harsh, but not untrue. At least as far back as Cain and Abel, the relationship between brothers has proved to be a complicated one, full of petty resentments, jealousies, and

As you might imagine, we read a lot of books here at EL. Followers of our Instagram may be familiar with our long-running What We’re Reading series, where we post every other week about what staff members have been reading and loving. Recently, we decided it was time to make this tradition a little more

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Hope You Still Love Me by Rabha Ashry, which will be published on May 4, 2027 by Santa Fe Writers Project. You can pre-order your copy here. Rabha Ashry is losing her mind. Fleeing her narcissistic mother and the suffocating cage of her home life in

“Our Inheritance Was Left to Us by No Testament,” an excerpt from An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail by Helene Giannecchini, translated by Anna Moschovakis I meet her online. She is named Myriam. I am 24, she is 40, which is unusual for me: I usually date people my age. I come across her profile

Every Mom Needs a Tub of Her Own Cabin for Four in High Sierra One winter, the Friday before a big storm, Mom brought home a clawfoot tub in the back of the pickup. She filled the tub with all the bags of groceries, just to make us laugh when we came out to help