Literature

“Boomerang” by Asha Dore I was the worst mother in the world that Tuesday night when Maggie was two months old. She was exactly the weight—pounds and ounces—she’d been the moment she was born. I boiled water for Lise’s butter noodles and wore Maggie strapped to my chest in a baby wrap, the fabric stretchy,

Ayşegül Savaş’s third novel, The Anthropologists, is a breathtaking excavation of the wonders and intricacies involved in making a modern life in a new city, of feeling both young and adult, and of growing up while settling down.  Through afternoon walks, late-night conversations, and a series of apartment tours, The Anthropologists follows Asya and her

Darling, I Always Leave a Mark Hard-Hearted Villanelle You like it when I hurt you in the dark. Hot wax, sharp slap, blindfold, belt and bite.I’m good at being bad. I play the partof angry boss, disgusted teacher, hard-hearted lover. You live to lose the fight.You like it. When I hurt you in the dark,I’m

Laura van den Berg’s latest novel, her fifth, State of Paradise, is set in a time and place both familiar and wildly unsettling: Florida during a period of pandemic and social unease. The unnamed narrator, a ghost-writer, weathers the pandemic at her mother’s house with her husband, a historian and avid runner. Her sister lives

Everything we live through shapes how we understand and engage with institutions and social connections. There are so many examples in history and in books of young people reckoning with institutions and dominant cultures, forcing—catalyzing—change through their actions. The beauty of so much literature is that it continues to find ways to remind us how

There’s this song that I love that I listened to quite a bit in the Fall of 2021. It became a kind of North Star lyric as I was rewriting my novel, Lo Fi, as it encompassed a feeling my narrator was dealing with, fresh off a too-long situationship, trying to forget someone. I wasn’t

Improbable Midnight Errands in a Starless City Atsuhiro Yoshida Share article An excerpt from Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida The clock struck 1:00 A.M. It must have been wound a little faster than the others, as the timepiece that Mitsuki was carrying sounded ahead of the countless others kept in the warehouse. A few moments

Nina Sharma is a woman in love. In her debut memoir, The Way You Make Me Feel: Love In Black And Brown, she reflects on the powerful love and solidarity of Afro-Asian allyship through the lens of her own interracial relationship as an Indian woman married to a Black man. Beginning in the suburbs of

Long before the question of “man versus bear” began to tear up TikTok, people have contemplated what it’s like to be with a beast. The earliest art we know of, cave paintings and rock carvings, shows humans interacting with wild animals. Over the tens of thousands of years since making those early marks, people have

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with Joni Mitchell, the new memoir by acclaimed writer Paul Lisicky, which will be published by HarperOne on February 4th, 2025. You can pre-order your copy here. From the moment Paul Lisicky heard Joni Mitchell while growing up in

“Notes on Conviction” by Tania Pabón Acosta 1 When I was fourteen, I became convinced that I was a witch. My magical powers included bringing imagined things to life, seeing the future, and an ability to make inanimate objects move. The walls in our school breathed as I walked down the hall. The posters of

I love books in which a character learns, or learns to master, a new skill. I don’t necessarily buy that the character in question has to discover something deep about themself in the process of taking up Italian or marimbas, but I do believe that they’re bound to start seeing things a bit differently, to

The Night the World Melted Away When Fire Owns the Air It began with observations. Then questions. Then speculations. Then the conclusion came that Ikenna Anyanwu, who lived at 8 Okigwe Road, was sleeping with a manfriend, Gbenga Afolabi. It had to be true. What two men who cohabited, shared a bed, fed from the

“Have you heard of loneliness before?” writes Charlee Dyroff. In the not too distant future, New York City will be remembered the ancient city that once served as the “epicenter of narrative, of creation.” Loneliness as a word or concept will be mostly forgotten. Dating apps will still be a thing.  In Loneliness & Company,

What is a family? As a child, answering that question felt like the easiest thing in the world. I was still blissfully oblivious, then, to the complexities of family life. The varying configurations, the awkward dynamics. The shapeshifting brought on by birth, death and divorce. Over the years I’ve come to understand that every family

Here’s the thing about thrillers: the surprise twists force readers to break their previous versions of “reality” and face a whole new version of the story. The best thriller writers build a world for you, and just as you’re getting comfortable, they flip it upside down—and maybe smash it too, for good measure. In life,

Florida Is a Strange Wilderness Growing Inside Me Laura van den Berg Author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears Share article Click to enlarge and scroll. An excerpt from State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg In Florida, my husband runs. Ten miles a day, seventy miles a week, a physical feat

We inherit far more from our families than a surname. Our progenitors leave their mark on us in ways we often can’t understand until we pay our own rent. Some of these qualities, of course, are admirable or anodyne—a sense of justice, a fondness for a particular cuisine, our sparkling wit—and others less admirable—a poor