Literature

Compulsively Trying to Please People Who Never Liked Me Jessi Jezewska Stevens Share article A New Book of Grotesques by Jessi Jezewska Stevens How had we turned out this way? My friend and I were plumbing disappointments over slices of cake. That was one of the best things about this country—people regularly ate Kuchen. It

Not very long ago, a description of our current moment would have read like a dystopian premise: a planet afflicted with deadly weather events, with rising oceans and global migration crises, with animal species rapidly going extinct, all while a rabid conservative movement flourishes worldwide, distorting facts and profiting off our downfall. Perhaps that is

In his 1917 essay “Art as Device,” Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky coined the term “defamiliarization” as a goal of the artist. To “defamiliarize,” simply stated, means to make the familiar appear strange or new. In other words, art should help us “re-see” our ordinary, mundane surroundings in a different way. In Bradley Sides’ new story

I went to a high school with about 1700 students and only 30 of them were Black. My Mama lived in the country—she always had red clay under her nails. She talked with her siblings more than her schoolmates. My Grandma was tugged off the school bus at 14 to help with chores and got

Electric Literature is please to reveal the cover of Beautiful Dreamers, the highly anticipated fourth novel by Minrose Gwin, which will be published by Hub City Press on August 27th, 2024. Preorder the book here. In 1953, Memory Feather and her mother Virginia are welcomed back to the Mississippi Gulf Coast community of Belle Cote, by

When I was ghostwriting full-time, I produced twenty books in fourteen years. Thanks to a suggestion from my literary agent, I realized a ghostwriter might make a great heroine—they’re under tremendous pressure, often while adjacent to the fame machine—so Mari Hawthorn, the ghostwriter at the center of my debut novel The Last Days of The

“The Club” by Jarek Steele The club is situated in a warehouse district near downtown St. Louis, a low building with turn-of-the-century brickwork that looks like every other low brick building in the city, surrounded by weedy parking lots and rusty chain link fences. When my friend Steven invited me to soak in the hot

Ah yes. Literature. The vehicle through which we may explore faraway lives we would have otherwise never imagined. From my little, rugged armchair, I can witness forbidden love in the 18th century. Peek into a bustling kitchen in New York City. Discover the dramatic betrayal that fractured the hottest band of the ’70s. But sometimes,

Rush Week at Kappa Kappa Murder The Roommates Every year, on the third weekend in October, there’s a vigil for Caroline. Every year, they use the same easel to prop up the same poster-size photograph of her, the one taken for our sorority composite the fall she disappeared. Shiny curls gleam golden atop tan shoulders,

Dr. Amina Gautier’s short story collection, The Best That You Can Do, refuses to be fixed in place, dancing across shores and between decades as a luminous chorus of speakers breaks into singular voices that carry readers from New England to Puerto Rico, Chicago and beyond, searching for answers to questions of race, identity, and

“Love is a fire,” Joan Crawford warns us, “but whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”  The most dangerous thing we can do—both on the page and in our daily lives—is to take a hard look at how we love, who we give ourselves to,

Domestic thrillers hinge, frequently, on a romantic relationship gone wrong. Anger, obsession, lust. But the dark bonds between siblings can be just as compelling—the rot at the core of a seemingly perfect family, the myriad ways we can be in the dark about those who share our blood. Five of my six novels feature main

Fitting In Will Cost You Your Soul Emma Binder Share article In the Heart of the Village by Emma Binder All the kids in our year had started selling their souls to each other at the beginning of seventh grade. Terrible arrangements transpired. In September, Matt Cywinski sold his soul to Brian Counter for a

Every Lunar New Year, Chinese astrology welcomes a new animal into our lives, representing a new year, a new character, a new set of opportunities and challenges for art, writing, and life. This year Lunar New Year is February 10, ringing in the Year of the Wood Dragon.  While the other eleven animals of the

The titular story in Jillian Danback-McGhan’s short story collection Midwatch opens with two depictions of Ashleigh via two photos used by the media while she is on trial for a crime committed in the Navy. The photo from boot camp shows a “typical smiling white girl, blonde hair slicked back in a tight bun.” The

Aotearoa New Zealand’s literary scene has always punched above its weight, with our Pacific nation producing luminaries like Katherine Mansfield, Keri Hulme, Maurice Gee, Janet Frame, and Witi Ihimaera—not to mention the queen of crime fiction, Ngaio Marsh. Reading fiction set in New Zealand, you can’t help but get a sense of the fortitude and

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for the essay collection We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat, which will be published by Graywolf Press on Sep. 3, 2024. Preorder the book here. Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes