Literature

Leslie Jamison’s new memoir Splinters follows the aftermath of divorce and the awakening of motherhood, but it explores desire more than it does any kind of death. Jamison wants to make meaning, to connect, to love, to feel, to mother, to write, and to revise her life endlessly. There are losses and grief along the

If you search the internet for “books about bipolar disorder,” the overwhelming majority of titles that appear are guaranteed to be self-help books to guide you (or your loved ones) through what is seen as a scary, unpredictable illness. It’s no wonder that manic-depressive symptoms have long been used as a dramatic plot device, or

The condition of being cut off—geographically, emotionally, or both—provides fertile ground for fiction. Isolation can be a pressure cooker for conflict and mystery. It can occasion reminiscence and reflection. It can lead to unlikely intimacy. And it can furnish the ideal lab conditions for thought experiments. My debut novel, The Other Valley, takes place in

“The News This Week” by Julia McKenzie Munemo “Did you hear about Ralph Yarl?” I ask George, my 17-year-old Black son on Tuesday night, five days after a white man in Missouri shot the 16-year-old Black child in the head and chest for knocking on his door; three days after a man in another state

Darling, Please Flatten Me With the Volvo A Contagious Age DEAR ________ : I WANT TO BE A BETTER FRIEND, I’M SORRY You put your hand on my neck and whisper that if you were here you would sew me a telephone. But you are here, I say, and then you walk to the door.

I’ll give you a plot and you tell me which 2023 film I’m referring to: A wide-eyed waif who lives in a technicolor world gains sentience and leaves on an existential odyssey that exposes her to the inequalities of a modern society. If you answered Poor Things, you’re right. If you answered Barbie, you’re also

Amy Lin’s debut memoir, Here After, is a taut, poetic, and intimate exploration of heartbreaking loss, devasting grief, and its unfathomable aftermath. In potent, swift, and artful prose, she details the love, and loss, of her husband, Kurtis, a vibrant human and skillful architect, who died suddenly, and without distinguishable cause, while running a virtual

When I began writing my unborn son a letter in 2018, a book was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t trying to unpack the countless ways in which the words “all men are created equal” have failed us in this country. Instead, I was thinking that I would write a letter, something that

According to CEO and psychologist Jessica Pryce-Jones, people spend 90,000 hours of their lifetimes at their jobs. Whatever form that profession takes, it’s inevitable that it will coincide with significant individual change. Work forces people to confront obstacles like office politics, autocratic managers, flaky colleagues, and productivity quotas, the tackling of which teaches them about

A Culinary Visit to the Belly of the Country J G Lynas Share article King of All Hogs by J G Lynas We’d been driving for two days, unsure where we were in this land of grass and hard dirt, the world made liminal by the blur of the road, by the pleasant haze of

Matt Gallagher, a U.S. Army veteran and author of the novels Youngblood and Empire City, first traveled to Ukraine in February 2022 to train civil volunteers how to defend themselves against Russia’s invasion. He had joined fellow veterans and scribes Adrian Bonenberger and Benjamin Busch, flying “there on our own dime and volition,” he later

Now more than ever, literary magazines by and for artists are prioritizing community and spotlighting the work of LGBTQIA+ writers and writers of color. I’m a lesbian writer whose identity is the crux of my work, but for many years I was told in writing workshops that queer love stories aren’t “believable, “realistic,” or even

An older woman protagonist launched into a story of substance isn’t all that easy to find. An older woman protagonist who upends our expectations about aging in gripping and unforgettable ways is truly rare. When I find one, I give an inward bow to the author and want to share the good news.  I’m aware

Every Tuesday, a wave of new books is published, fresh off the printing press onto the shelves of bookstores around the world. Even for a book editor like me, it gets overwhelming to keep track of all the forthcoming titles. So we’ve turned to our most trusted source for recommendations: indie booksellers. From a star-crossed

“Placenta, Polenta, a Piece of Onion” by Kirby Chen Mages It was the winter that Ryan and I were squatting in the building on North Avenue in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. Actually, we weren’t squatting—we were squatting before, then we were evicted, and now we were paying $240 a month to rent an

I grew up watching fights with my father on television, and have always been drawn to the sport—its characters, its rhetoric and, later, the best writing about it by stylists like Hugh McIlvanney, who once wrote of the terminally shy, matchstick-thin, Welsh fighter Johnny Owen, who died in the ring: “It is his tragedy that

Lawn Care Tips From My Dad’s Ghost Sundays Are for Yard Work When you first appeared in my backyard, riding the big red mower you bought in ‘99, I was thrilled. You had been dead almost twenty years, and I missed you like crazy. It was the smell. Your sweat mixed with exhaust and grass

When I started writing my memoir, The Cycle, about being diagnosed with Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), I had rarely seen periods in literature, much less PMDD, with the exception of some health textbooks. In fact, my entire understanding of what a period was supposed to be like was shaped by a resounding silence. Periods happen