Your Only Job Is to Ignore That Phone 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 Temporary Job It was a recession and I got laid off. “I’m sorry,”
Literature
When we heard the news yesterday that Adam Zagajewski had passed away at the age of seventy-five in Kraków, Poland, we immediately thought not only of his exceptional poetry and essays but also of his exceedingly warm congeniality. Zagajewski and his wife, Maya, graced us with their presence at the University of Oklahoma in October
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. When writing and revising my novel Call It Horses, I spent time in the narrator Frankie’s two spiritual homelands—the desert and the
The artist is a lawyer who defends any accused person when society plays the role of the judge. I am generally biased for injustice and those stripped of their rights.―Walid Ebeid Reflecting on the work of Egyptian artist Walid Ebeid, Yahia Lababidi considers the “artist as witness, activist, public scold, and collective conscience, all rolled
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. Without want, there is no personhood. Whether the flush thrill of sex, or the gratification of a good meal (or both, 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. A year ago, I abruptly moved from New York City back to my parents’ house in Southern California. Suddenly, after spending years
WLT is helping co-sponsor the three-day “Reflecting on the Past, Facing the Future” symposium (April 8–10) in Norman and Tulsa, which will commemorate the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Two-term U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will deliver the keynote, historians Scott Ellsworth and Hannibal B. Johnson will offer plenary talks, and the I Dream of
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. I might argue that the sea is literature’s greatest character, living as she does among the best mysteries ever written. And yet
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. For years, I convinced myself I couldn’t grasp the sense of a sentence without paper and ink. The same letters, flashed on
Jasna Đuričić, in her role as Aida Selmanagic, from Jasmila Zbanic’s film, Quo vadis, Aida? (2020) A war refugee from Bosnia now living, writing, and teaching in Sweden reviews Quo Vadis, Aida?, the Oscar-nominated film about a UN translator in Srebrenica when the Serbian army takes over the town in July 1995. After considering both the praise and 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. From LOLITA IN THE AFTERLIFE, edited by Jenny Minton Quigley. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday
Once a Sarah, Always a Sarah Sam Cohen 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. “Sarahland” by Sam Cohen You’ve read the story, but there’s no forest
Images courtesy of Italo Lanfredini / italolanfredini.it Invitations The outside brick wall of La Silenziosa, Italo Lanfredini’s house-studio-open-air-museum near Commessaggio, Italy, features a Wall of Song (Muro del canto). Amidst inscribed terra-cotta tiles, a poem by world-renowned Italian jazz musician Giorgio Gaslini greets the visitor at the gate: Concerto All’Aperto Il dolce maestro ispiratoconcerta i virtuosi
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 day, when we are finally back to normal life, the Covid-19 epidemic will stay with us as a mosaic of images
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. Wrongful convictions are a particularly American horror story. In no other country is the possibility that you might one day be incarcerated
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 portrait has long been fertile ground for novelists, offering insights into the characters of artist, subject and viewer, not to mention
Born and brought up in Assam, Kaushik Barua is an emerging Indian English author. He completed his degree in economics from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, and then studied political economy at the London School of Economics. In his day job, he has been working in the development sector for the last fifteen years, managing
Spring’s a Love Note and I’m Lonely as Hell 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. Bouquet #1 Violets bloomed from sidewalk cracks on my walk west this morning