Literature

Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing / Photo by Alex Berger / Flickr The year 2021 marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In April, the CCP released the latest edition of A Brief History of the Communist Party of China, in which the chapter dedicated to the Cultural Revolution

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. Each “Unfinished Business” will examine an unfinished work left behind by one of our greatest authors. What might have been genius, and

One Last Night with the Worst Best Friends Brandon Taylor Brandon Taylor is the senior editor of Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading. Share article If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual

Unrequited love I download a book. One of those books—for women. Certainly not porn, but you know. Never mind the shirtless guy gracing its cover (his lumpy, bumpy abs—oh my!), or the wanton splay of the woman draping him like a second, luminous skin. It’s online, so who’s to know? I bought it on a

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. “America is adolescence without end,” Ben Lerner writes in The Topeka School. His witty, revelatory novel follows the Gordon Family—Adam, a high

Left column (top to bottom): Boris Boubacar Diop, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya;Middle left column: Michális Ganás, Cristina Rivera Garza, Jean-Pierre Balpe; Middle right column: Natalie Diaz, Naomi Shihab Nye, Micheline Aharonian Marcom; Right column: Kwame Dawes, Reina María Rodríguez.Petrushevskaya photo © Anastassia Kazakova. Diaz photo © MacArthur Foundation. Dawes photo by Chris Abani World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine

Boyhoods Lost to This Endless War If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. Campfire Outside Valdorros The boy should be in a robe ringing altar bells or chasing a

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. One of the reasons I’m fascinated by teenage friendships is because my own experience during those years of my life was so

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. Now that the finale has aired and the dust has settled around the body of Erin McMenamin, maybe you’ve found yourself missing

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. What can memory endure? A story, we know, can be told and retold for generations, find its way centuries later in the

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. You might know her from her uproariously funny Twitter account or her New York Times-bestselling debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, or maybe

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. Avoiding the impulse to create “inspiration porn”—narratives that highlight the overcoming of obstacles in order to make sighted people feel uplifted and

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, among writers “influence always proceeds by misinterpretation.” In The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom argues that

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. After a year of lockdown, writing residencies are back. Residencies are a good way to dedicate time to your craft or make

If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. In college, I was living in Amsterdam and a friend leant me a copy of Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues. As I read

A Trust Fund Boyfriend Who Doesn’t Own Sheets Laurie Colwin Share article If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. “The Boyish Lover” by Laurie Colwin When Jane Mayer met

He said: Why must they destroy and destroy again? Why must they forget my face my gestures my voice? Why must they believe in my absence even as I stand in front of them? Why must they erase my wounds and toss my tears to the dogs? Why must they forget that I am a man just

Our society is increasingly global, and the era of Covid-19 is no different. We may forget our localities and the importance of community in consuming the news and internet media. One city, the domain of Mother Theresa, a holy city, is Kolkata. Three editors compact its poetic resources in The Kolkata Cadence, a new anthology