Electric Lit is committed to publishing—and paying writers—through the pandemic without any layoffs or pay cuts. Please consider supporting us during this difficult time. Donate here. . Amado Vazquez, a Mexican botanist, named an orchid after Joan Didion. While that was a chic gesture, I don’t think of her as an orchid. I think of her
Literature
Electric Lit is committed to publishing—and paying writers—through the pandemic without any layoffs or pay cuts. Please consider supporting us during this difficult time. Donate here. . It’s fitting—maybe even a little on-the-nose—that the last book I finished on my commute to work was Hilary Leichter’s Temporary. Now that my twice-daily train ride has been indefinitely
Cancer Is the Secret of This Company Town Leah Hampton Share article Electric Lit is committed to publishing—and paying writers—through the pandemic without any layoffs or pay cuts. Please consider supporting us during this difficult time. Donate here. . “Twitchell”by Leah Hampton For the first half of Margie Pifer’s pottery lecture at the Arts Council picnic,
Reading at the Edge of the Forest, by Marti Spencer / Courtesy of the artist The following talk was first presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in Seattle, Washington, January 2020. Teaching the literature of American Indians is admittedly paradoxical. On one hand, it has to do with the fact that
View inland from the top of Zennor Hill / Courtesy of the author Walking his dogs through the Zennor moors, a writer in Cornwall contemplates the area’s literary history and discovers the ever-growing distance between the new reality brought by the pandemic and his family’s plans for a two-year stay on the Avenue Katherine Mansfield.
The recent collection of short stories by Neva Lukić, Endless Endings (Bokeh, 2018), originally written in Croatian and translated into English by Jeremy White, was published first in Croatia under a different title: More i zaustavljene priče (HDP, 2016) and then in Serbia (Treći trg, Srebrno drvo, 2018). It is not a debut book but
Marie Ross with one of the clarinets showcased on her Brahms recording. Clarinet photo by by Matthew Gregan. In this profile of clarinetist Maire Ross, Olga Zilberbourg explores how Ross, with her 2019 CD Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas and Trio, asserts her agency as an interpretive artist against the musical tradition. As a sixteen-year-old clarinet student at
Gulf Road and the Kuwait City skyline / Photo courtesy of the author Reflecting on the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the current pandemic, the author writes about wanting “to grab the future with both hands, to sing about survival, to believe, like my father did, that Kuwait is worth rebuilding from scratch.” In
Statue of Ramos at Ponta Verde beach, Maceió, Brazil / Wikipedia In her new translation of Graciliano Ramos’s São Bernardo, forthcoming early next month from New York Review Books, Padma Viswanathan reproduces the linguistic edges of Ramos’s quicksilver prose in hopes of raising Ramos’s profile in the anglophone world. Graciliano Ramos worked hard. Born in
Left: Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People (2020) / Courtesy of IMDB Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel is a meticulous observation, or even a study, of how one human being can have immense, intense power over another. (The following review contains spoilers.) The novel Normal People, which was first published in 2018, is the
The author at the Zakir Hussain Delhi College during the Bengali Literary Festival 2018 / Photo courtesy of bitanchakraborty.com Simplicity and quiet elegance never fail to impress us. The effect of a good short story often is like a fugue or an adagio in a musical composition, creating impressions fugitifs, in the best manner of
Writer Ethel Rohan documents the little victories that stand in place of the life events that should be happening out there as she and her family shelter in place in San Francisco. My house is loud. It is day 15 of San Francisco’s Covid-19 shelter-in-place order. In the family room, my husband is recording a
Top Row (left to right): Jonathan Auxier, Monica Brown, Tanita S. Davis. Middle row: Adib Khorram, Sonia Patel, Randy Ribay. Bottom row: Cynthia Weill, Tanaya Winder, Janet Wong. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced the names of the jury members who will select the finalists for the renowned