Literature

I grew up with a surprising amount of family archives. Photographs, scrapbooks, and even my Japanese grandparents’ passports, once nestled in old fruit packing boxes in closets and basements, now occupy space in my own home. As a third-generation Japanese American, the fact that I have so many of my family members’ materials is both

A New Mother Hungry for the World on Her Plate Adrienne Celt Adrienne Celt is the author of three novels, including End of the World House (S&S 2022), Invitation to a Bonfire, and The Daughters, as well as a collection of comics, Apocalypse How? an Existential Bestiary. Share article “Oh No” by Adrienne Celt Longtime

Hasan Dudar’s debut collection, Carryout, follows a Palestinian-Lebanese family through their years in the shifting landscape of Toledo, Ohio. Dudar places the migrant experience at the heart of his book and offers a poignant examination of displacement and belonging in the Arab American community. When Ziad Idilbi, a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, meets Salma, a

It feels good to type these next few words: The Pulitzer Prize announcement is nigh! On Monday, May 4th, at 3:00 p.m. EST, we’ll find out which book takes home one of the literary world’s most celebrated prizes. Live stream the announcement here! To be honest, it’s nice to be able to celebrate something. The

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of The Volcano Keeper by Bradley Sides, which will be published on October 20th, 2026 by Regal House Publishing. You can pre-order your copy here. When a volcano suddenly emerges in the middle of his family’s Alabama cattle pasture, young Charlie Melvin is confronted with a promise

Altered Remains by Aleina Grace Edwards For six weeks, every painting on the wall is brown. Pretty, stoic deer stand and stare with wide wet eyes; slick panthers stalk across the frames; and dawn breaks over some craggy mountain tops. Entire galaxies churn, the panels bursting with starfields that could be anywhere, in our corner

Montreal is a surging literary city with its own unique idiosyncrasies and marks of character. Compared with, say, Toronto, Montreal literature sits alongside a wider cultural scene arising from the bilingual locale with many universities, countless cultural festivals, and publishing hotspots, including the legendary indie darling Drawn & Quarterly, which specializes in graphic novels. All

True Love With Three Olives and a Twist The Martini Fairy Tell me a story, he said. A happy one. Your stories are always so sad.  It’s what I’m good at. Besides, it’s hard to write a happy story, I said. But I’ll try. What kind of story? One with fairies, he said, after thinking

The first and only time I’ve visited Korea was in November 2019, with my father. Although we are Korean American, neither of us speak the language; he is third-generation American-born, I am fourth. As I spent a week surrounded by people with my shared heritage, I wondered: What was the Korea that my great-grandparents knew?

It was hard not to shed a tear or two when Stranger Things came to a close this winter. I was in college when the first season aired—not exactly a kid in a way that might have made the story’s characters relatable. But at 19, I was on the cusp of a symbolic split, straddling

We were at Carter Road, fingers still sticky from the Belgian waffles we’d just demolished, when Bani admitted she’d been forbidden from drinking water at my house. “Because you’re a Muslim and eat meat,” she added guilelessly. Bani and I went to school together in Mumbai, and had been friends for nearly seven years at

Our Wee Town’s Violent History Is Having Its Hollywood Moment Séamas O’Reilly Share article An excerpt from Prestige Drama by Séamas O’Reilly We heard about Monica Logue going missing same as everyone else. It was in the Gazette and I’d know the editor, Deirdre, very well since she comes into the shop the odd time

I first encountered Emma Copley Eisenberg’s work through this wonderful essay from EL contributor Elizabeth Endicott. In it, Endicott chronicles her experience delving into Eisenberg’s Housemates as a plus-size reader; she moves from apprehension to relief to recognition, highlighting Eisenberg’s ability to render fatness without the shadow of authorial judgment. Deeply imagined and embodied, Eisenberg’s

April 26 is Independent Bookstore Day, and to celebrate, Electric Lit is once again sharing a round-up of some of our favorite independent bookstores, including a few that are new to the literary landscape. In a time when it seems as if the very earth is moving beneath our feet, we remember that books and

Patrick Cottrell’s second novel Afternoon Hours of a Hermit begins with a mysterious envelope delivered in the mail; inside is a childhood photograph of the narrator’s deceased brother, sent just as the fifth anniversary of his suicide approaches. It is the kind of inciting incident that carries all the scaffolding of a detective story—a mystery

A Mother and Daughter Are An Edge by Sarah Giragosian “A mother and daughter are an edge. Edges are ecotones, transitional zones, places of danger or opportunity.”– Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds When my mother died, I was handed some pamphlets about grief, its permutations and stages. What to expect. What falls within

Small towns and cities mean different things to different people. To a big-city dweller visiting for the weekend, it can be a place to lose—or find—oneself; a place to rejuvenate and invigorate. For someone who hails from a small town, it can mean getting in touch with one’s roots. To those who inhabit these spaces

The Fragile Pride of the Displaced New Englander Away in Tampa I was there in the cheap seats when the man with Boston on his back tackled the giant bug. A shaded skyline that enfolded his shoulders, revealed when he frenzied his shirt over his head after Nathan Horton scored in the second—the Ontarian dispatching