Literature

What defines a moment, a movement? The cause or the people who defend it? Too often both are overshadowed by chaos, destruction, and misdirection. John Willis’s Mni Wiconi / Water Is Life (George F. Thompson, 2019) finds a refreshing sense of clarity between the two. Told from the perspective of the members of the Standing

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Ah, the 1980s. New Wave, post-punk, huge hair, the brat pack. Dancing next to Grace Jones at AREA, eating at The Empire

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Before the stay-at-home orders came down in Baltimore, the last thing I did in person was participate in a panel conversation about—ironically—“art

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Set in a small town in an abstracted American South, Catherine Lacey’s Pew traces a week in the life of its eponymous

I Remember the Drowning Years Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Landscape with Self-Actualization after Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Let’s start with the horse: sometimes,especially

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . When Jason Adam Katzenstein, a cartoonist at The New Yorker, was first diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder as a preteen, there weren’t

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Judy Garland and I spent a lot of time together last spring. For months on end she kept me company on subway

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . In mid-July, Netflix dropped the 8-episode series Indian Matchmaking, which follows Mumbai matchmaker Sima Taparia as she travels around the United States

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . “I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, as you go on

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Gov. Pritzker issued a stay-at-home order for Illinois starting on March 21st. Ever since then, I’ve been watching Chicago out of my

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Two hundred meters beneath a chateau in the Italian countryside, eight people stand trembling in a bunker, backs against the concrete wall.

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . With the cancellation of the Summer Olympics this year and a pandemic continuing to rage on, most of us are stuck at

Series editor’s note: What does it mean for a body to remember its feeding, to have to reckon with its darkest days, days spent eating weeds in the aftermath of a genocide? And what does it mean for the body to choose to harm itself, by eating anything to make it whole, to forget what

Confessions from the Stranger at the End of the Bar Peter Cameron Author of What Happens At Night  Share article Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . An Excerpt from

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Comics aren’t what people usually think of as revolutionary texts–but, in reality, many graphic narratives are deeply rooted in political movements and

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Imagine a world where reproductive rights are heavily restricted, hand sanitizer is sold out everywhere, and a pandemic has disrupted people’s lives

Electric Lit relies on contributions from our readers to help make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. Please support our work by becoming a member today, or making a one-time donation here. . Displayed upright on my desk, as if it were a work of art or a rare book, is a cheap one-subject notebook

From the Family Album A writer born in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir reflects on how his older brother must have felt once the freedom to roam the apricot grove and streets of the village was suddenly curtailed as Kashmir began its insurgency against India. 1 Winter returned, wrapping the village in a shroud of