Literature

Julie Buntin and I first met when Electric Literature shared an office with Catapult in the mid-2010s. She was a book editor and the director of Catapult’s beloved educational program; I had recently become Electric Literature’s Executive Director. I was an aspiring writer with a few short stories; Julie was about to publish her debut

The latest target of book banning and censorship is Vinita Prabhakar, an English professor who dared to assign her students Ottessa Moshfegh’s short story “Bettering Myself.” Prabhakar, who taught the story for years, was fired from her position at South Florida State College after one of her English students said the story made them “a

A Nigerian Man Wakes Up White and Voyages Into the Heart of Whiteness A Igoni Barrett Share article An excerpt from Whyteface by A Igoni Barrett Four years after skipping town, Frank Whyte was back in Lagos traffic, from which none escapes once caught. It was another hot night in June, and he was slouched

When my husband and I started house hunting in the DC suburbs three years ago, it never crossed our minds that we’d live as anything but a typical nuclear family: just us and our future kids. But the house we bought featured an apartment-style basement, complete with its own kitchen, full bathroom, and private entrance.

“ACHILLEA | the Addict,” an excerpt from I Have This Thing for Flowers by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn In its most generic form, yarrow (Achillea millefolium, mille meaning thousand and folium referring to its numerous petals) appears as clusters of tiny blossoms atop thin, sturdy stalks. The word for the plant’s flowering structure is “umbel.”

The Dead Return Every Minnesota Winter bird hunting My father staggers aheadwith a rifle strapped to his shoulder,the first snow still saltedin drifts of his hair.Cov noog tau mus tsev lawm,he says, but we trek furtherto places the wildfires have yet to claim.We passed a nest of robin eggscrushed beneath a giant silver maple,he gathers

Set during a sweltering summer in 1977 Guadalajara, a serpent girl weeps in a carnival glass box. A neighbor’s dog is dangled repeatedly from a tree. A ghost sits on a bed in a sinister house, returning night after night. Cecilia Eudave’s The Summer of the Serpent moves among six narrators—children and adults who witness

There Is More Than One Way to Read Tarot in the French Quarter Katherine Conner Share article “The Hanged Man” by Katherine Conner Roman spots the flyer on his way to read palms in Jackson Square. Taped to the window of a coffee shop, Have You Seen Me? above a photo of a dark-haired girl,

I was once a different version of myself. I was a child and then a young adult in a conservative, Christian community. Existing in that environment required morphing and shrinking in ways that I find painful to think about now. But one thing I could never fully deny was my interest in sex, that thing

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Beauty Talk by Asa Drake, which will be published on October 13th, 2026 by Noemi Press. You can pre-order your copy here. Intimate, wry and a little sour, Asa Drake’s Beauty Talk addresses the (im)possibility of talking about beauty in America without addressing whiteness. Here is

An excerpt from All That’s Unseen by Emilee Hackney “Hey, where’s your ring?” Jeremy sat on the counter in front of the microwave. He was supposed to be finishing up the day’s dishes. “Sold it,” I said. I was crouched in front of the open oven, steel wool in one hand, degreaser in the other.

Fly Me to the Island of Giant Rats Departure My son wanted to run around the departure lounge before we got on the plane, and it wasn’t like I could say, Now we must sit in our seats and wait and wait. He was too little for that. So I followed him as he ran

There is a particular pleasure in lost objects. We know it in ordinary life: the small shock of finding again what had vanished, the almost absurd intensity of a key, a ring, a photograph, a letter suddenly returned to us. Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts, her debut novel, turns that intimate sensation into a larger, more dangerous

Even Bad Men Need Company in the Night Samuel Jensen Share article “Young Flower” by Samuel Jensen Pathetic, really, how late in life he had come into his beauty. It didn’t even have the decency to be the normal kind of beauty—no, his was the beauty of a svelte but surprisingly strong former prisoner of

Sometimes, long term friendships reach a moment of reckoning. I’m not talking about your work friends, or that roommate you swore to keep in touch with but never found the time. I’m talking about your chosen family. The people you thought would never leave you. When they do—or you do—something big shatters inside. Maybe this

“Man with Fish” by Rebecca Swanberg “Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.” — Pascal We’d been driving in silence for some time. Nothing was wrong—nothing we could point to. It was early autumn. The larch trees had begun to yellow, and there was new snow in the

The Bruised Apple Tumbles Far From the Tree SHIMÁ / My Mother, ayóó’ ánííníshní / I love you, a lot. Click to enlarge Crack, crack, crack. Click to enlarge Take a break from the news We publish your favorite authors—even the ones you haven’t read yet. Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your