Literature

Novels-in-stories contain their own specific joys. One is the sense of partnership they can foster between the reader and the book. In the “off-camera” time between story-chapters, the reader gets to fill in what transpires. As a writer, it takes trust to leave that space—a kind of trust the reader can feel. In writing my

I occupy a corner of the internet where I’m largely secluded from a cis audience’s reaction to I Saw the TV Glow, the second feature from director Jane Schoenbrun. Instead, I see trans people dunk on fellow viewers who — with varying degrees of innocence — are unable to put their finger on the film’s

For me, queerness has always been related to imagination. Like many of us, I grew up without a blueprint for a queer life. In the evangelical household I was raised in, I had to dream my queerness into existence, conjure a life that was forbidden to me, claim it because no one was ever going

Dialing In by Heidi Diehl Remembering this time feels as though I’m listening to one of the callers, to a message from a stranger who is also me. At the start of summer 2001, I responded to a Craigslist ad for “Phone Actors.” I’d just turned 20, and I needed extra income to supplement my

Because athleticism is often regarded as the antithesis of intellectualism (the jock/nerd dichotomy remains commonplace), books about sport get overlooked as being non-serious, non-literary, or unimportant. People think they’re just fun. And they are fun. Sports are fun, so why wouldn’t the associated novels be? And they’re usually wonderfully structured—the training camp, the game, the

Hell, Michigan Click to enlarge How to Steal From the Gods During the Commercial Break Click to enlarge The post God Only Exists in Hell, Michigan appeared first on Electric Literature. Read the original article here

Suzanne Scanlon’s book, Committed: A Memoir of Finding Meaning in Madness, is a memoir unlike any I’ve read. Scanlon returns to the landscape of the past, reflecting on her experience of being committed in the New York State Psychiatric Hospital while a student at Barnard in the late 1990s. Scanlon explores her own history with

It begins with a desire to escape. Travel is an elixir, Shirley Hazzard wrote, a talisman. And what is the act of opening a book, if not an act of travel, of transportation? If not, something alchemical? A charmed amulet.  When I wrote my debut novel, The Nude, set on a fictionalized island off the

We look at our faces so often we hardly notice them changing. I remember the shock of my first fine line, a thin crease between my eyebrows that is deepest in the morning because I grimace in my sleep. It bothered me how much it bothered me. But I was in my mid-twenties, and this

Not All Men Are Wolves But Some Are Elizabeth Garver Jordan Share article The Cry of the Pack by Elizabeth Garver Jordan Mr. Nestor Hurd, our “feature” editor, was in a bad humor. We all knew he was, and everybody knew why, except Mr. Nestor Hurd himself. He thought it was because he had not

While reading a debut novel, oftentimes, there exists a momentary thrill of forgetting about craft. Instead, it can feel as if these writers grew up alongside their stories—in parallel lines and lives, naturally accumulating sentences with every inch they grew. There is a tender, literary innocence and a certain freedom from expectation that comes with

If you’re like me, maybe you don’t need another steam of ingestible content. Maybe you’re looking for a detox, a beach vacation, a new brand of coffee. You might be surprised to hear it, but all of these things go with one of the literary podcasts on this list like wine with cheese. Or beer

When I was a kid, we had this one book lying around—bottom rung of the bookcase, floor level: a glossy collection of ’80s food erotica. A woman with two tufts of whipped cream covering her nipples, cherries on top. A gently held guava, crotch-height. A mouth eating a banana. When I was home alone I’d

If there is a better-smelling vegetable than a tomato grown in dirt and ripened in the sun, I don’t know it. But I know I could almost conjure up that smell just from looking at my father’s old Super 8 video home movies. I think a tomato is my first sensory memory, though I’m sure

Growing up in Jamaica, my family and I went to the beach every Sunday, eating fried fish and fluffy, airy dumplings, swimming in water so crystal clear it looked like diamonds sparkled on it. We’d come home sunburned and windswept, and we’d sleep well that night, our energy completely sapped by the sun.  The next

“On the Pioneer Woman” by Krys Malcolm Belc Nearly twenty years after I first discover the Pioneer Woman, I sit naked in bed nursing my daughter, one hand holding my phone over her head, the other holding a burp cloth to catch the leaking milk on the other side, and watch again and again the

When I was a very little girl my mother used to take me over to the neighbor’s house down the street. Susan* (*not her real name), the neighbor was twenty or so years older than my mother and had a forty-year-old son who lived at home with her. He used to take me upstairs and

Please Delete All Memories Where I’m Not a Boy Show Me Tell us if there’s a specific date or date range that you’d rather not see in your memories. —Facebook I would rather not see November 18, 2008, the day I faceplanted on the sidewalk after school and snow surged up my kitten mittens and