Literature

What defines the strongest fictional characters?  The most intriguing ones are often developed, revealed or transformed based on their wishes and desires; in other words, what they crave. The more intense the craving, the more commanding the character. In fact, character cravings frequently create the conflicts and plots. What would the evil stepmother in Sleeping

My Spite Could Fill a Museum Tell It to the Birds I am sick of not winning the National Poetry Series. I am sick of waiting for the mammogram, the ultrasound, the appointment to discuss the results. Tomorrow is the first day of school in the year of our Lord 10x the number of Covid

[On October 7, 2023, members of the Islamist militant group Hamas, who governs the Gaza Strip, launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,400 people and capturing roughly 240 hostages. In retaliation, the Israeli government, helmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared war on Hamas. Israel’s retaliation campaign has killed an estimated 11,000 Palestinian civilians

The moment I learned that Shilpi Suneja’s debut novel House of Caravans was about Partition, I reached out to see if she would be interested in doing this interview. All four of my grandparents lived through this event in Punjab—the state that was split to create Pakistan days after India gained independence from Britain in

You Can’t Plan Feelings Out of a Foursome Elisa Faison Share article Group Sex by Elisa Faison Frances and Ben are in their sweatpants on a Saturday morning. He has made the coffee, as he always does. She drinks more than her fair share of the pot, but always offers the final half-cup to Ben.

True crime is hot right now. It’s a genre seen across every media you can think of, from podcasts to TV shows to movies and even books. The idea of crime and mystery, of violence against a neighbor or family member—these narratives captivate and fascinate us, for better or for worse.  But after the Dateline

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for Bluff by Danez Smith, which will be published by Graywolf Press on August 20, 2024. Preorder thebook here. Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder

Modernity has always been profoundly unsettling. Living in an ever-changing world means that no one really knows how to be a human on any given day, and we all have to feel our way forward in the dark. But that’s precisely why the horror genre exists: to explore that darkness’ farthest edges with us. Through

Etaf Rum’s Evil Eye is a captivating, heart wrenching novel about navigating intergenerational trauma, and finding your identity in a culture where women are not perceived beyond the roles they perform in service of others. Yara, a Palestinian American young woman, spends her days stretching herself thin as she takes care of her two daughters,

There’s a TikTok trend that haunts me lately, finding its way to my phone every chance it gets. In the short videos, posted by hundreds of fresh-faced, beautiful young girls, I watch as they struggle to answer the question “How old are you?” In between the question and their answer, they gag and try to

This Android Hopes You’ll Swipe Right Requiem for the Most Famous Drag King of Our Lifetimes Despite the urban legends she lived to a ripe old age of 15— a comfortable retirement in Santa Clarita, long walks on the beach, lazing in the sun, beloved, after traversing two star-studded decades with the likes of Reese

Back in high school in the 1990s, I was taught history with a capital “H,” the kind of history that focused on a single narrative. It was a view of history that revealed only the narrowest strip of the past, a thin swath of experience from which many people, places, and ideas were excluded. Microhistories

Jami Nakamura Lin begins with a warning: “In the presence of a story—if the story is a good one—time collapses.” This is precisely what she achieves in a genre-bending memoir that collapses past and present, personal and mythical. The Night Parade begins with her attempts to trace the origins of her bipolar disorder that first

It was a stormy summer day, dead in the middle of August, with lightning sheeting the sky and a deep underwater gloom pervading the parking deck. My three-year-old had fallen asleep in his car seat on our way to the children’s museum, and I could hardly believe my luck: a whole hour to spend on

Who is responsible for maintaining family lore? In Company, Shannon Sanders introduces—and repeatedly reintroduces—readers to the Collinses, a Black family with roots in D.C. and Atlantic City. Sanders, a master of character, makes every individual distinctive and recognizable even as they clearly belong to a whole, bound by shared history, values, and challenges.  In “The

A Black Belt in Karate Doesn’t Make a Fair Father Salar Abdoh Share article An excerpt from A Nearby Country Called Love by Salar Abdoh He couldn’t bear going back to the apartment just yet. The apartment of the dead. When they’d been much younger he had shared the big bedroom with his older brother

Venezuela, my home country, was once one of the richest countries in Latin America due to the discovery of oil at the start of the last century. Today, Venezuela is in political and economic turmoil with a mass exodus of more than 7 million.   As I wrote my new memoir, Motherland about the fragile concept

The Masquerade of the Red Death is the one night every year where we gather in Brooklyn, celebrate with our community, and raise funds to support our work. It is also the night the spirit of our party patron saint Edgar Allan Poe is strongest, and the spooky vibes reach their peak! This year, our friends,