Literature

Photo courtesy of the author for Rachelle 4/27/2020 Our moms were widows before they met our fathers.Their hair blue-black, their hands already chapped, caressedby Inglis die-cast tooling  Bren light machine guns, Mauserammunition, or Browning  Hi-Power handguns, torpedo warheadcasings, or reining sorrels’ leather when they made mountains home.Their first loves shot, stabbed,  or lost in war. While our fathers

Amidst nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism in policing, the role of crime writers in shaping public perceptions of the police has also been called into question. Police procedurals are among the most ubiquitous programming on television and almost always center the perspectives of the cops, often depicting acts of brutality as the

I braved the dating scene for nearly five years in New York, but it was a friend breakup that hurt me the most during those tumultuous early-20s. It felt so sudden, so cataclysmic, so altogether unexplainable. I found myself wanting so badly a chance to have another conversation—to get some sort of closure. A years-long

Rishi Reddi takes “epic” to the next level with this untold PoC history of California. Passage West is a novel of California, of the U.S.-Mexico border, and of America, that you probably had no idea you needed in your life. The novel begins with Karak Singh on his deathbed in a Los Angeles hospital in

Times like this come every few years. The summer begins, and so do the Black deaths due to state-sanctioned violence. But this time, the corporations and publications say they want to change. They finally admit—if they hadn’t already done so in the past—that Black Lives Matter, and so do Black writers.  At a time where

I’ve been to many a tertulia in my life. In Costa Rica, these informal literary, artistic, or intellectual gatherings are as common and important as Sunday mass, and just as enlightening. Recently, thanks to Vincent Toro, I’ve experienced two types of tertulias I hadn’t thought possible—the first, his unforgettable new collection titled Tertulia, and the

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?” we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This month we’re talking to Sharlene Teo, who’s teaching a six-week workshop on building and maintaining emotional suspense in fiction—a technique she uses to great effect in her novel Ponti.

Corona Avenue, Queens / Photos by David Rohlfing (1) On the longest day of the longest year, I did not sleep. I stood as witness with the maximum tilt of the Arctic Circle toward the sun. (2) I live with my husband in Queens, the storied borough of New York City frequently cited as the

My Son the Medium Can’t Even Tell Me Why We’re Here Joy Williams Share article “The Country”by Joy Williams I attend a meeting called Come and See! The group gathers weekly at the Episcopal church in one of the many, many rooms available there but  in  the way these things are it’s wide open to everyone—atheists, Buddhists, addicts, depressives, everyone. The discussion

Series editor’s note: Kwame Dawes’s poem is a powerful piece to start off the Black Voices series, and one that fits perfectly into the outrage of the most recent uprisings in the aftermath of George Floyd’s senseless death. At its fulcrum, it begins with an offhand comment from an unnamed Midwestern woman, who says, perhaps

Photo by Mahtem Shiferraw In the aftermath of the senseless deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and many others before them, it is difficult to think we can still continue to write poetry. The rage, the hopelessness, the grief are still raw, and with every new death, our bodies open into

Ottessa Moshfegh can write about cynicism and vice in a way that is at once dangerously validating and innocuously readable. Her characters are young, prideful, verbose, and hate the world just enough more than they hate themselves to make room for an inventive plot every time. Death in Her Hands, Moshfegh’s latest, is a little

When the going gets weird, I look to the weird to help me keep going. The three women in my novel, I Keep My Worries In My Teeth, are all misfits. Ruth is a widow who steals photographs and hoards time because she’s trying to bring back her dead husband. Esther only understands the world

Visiting the Local Greasy Spoon with an Actual Saint The following story was chosen by Nicole Chung as the winner of the 2020 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. The prize is awarded annually by Selected Shorts and a guest author judge. The winning entry receives $1000, a 10-week writing course with Gotham Writers Workshop

Not to sound like an assistant district attorney from SVU, but it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that acclaimed essayist and book critic Ilana Masad has carved a prominent space for herself in the realm of mother-daughter literature with her debut novel, All My Mother’s Lovers. It sits upon a throne of 2020

Yu Miri first started researching the evictions of the homeless community in Tokyo’s Ueno Park back in 2006. Days or even hours before visits by the emperor and the imperial family, eviction notices would be pasted to their tarpaulin huts, instructing them to dismantle the huts, clear away their belongings, and move out. Many of

Photo by Camila Valdés Megan McDowell has translated many contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain, including Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, and Lina Meruane. Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, her translations have been published in the New Yorker, Tin House, the Paris Review, Harper’s, and McSweeney’s, among others. Veronica Esposito: As a translator, you’ve