Literature

It’s no coincidence that wellness has become a trillion-dollar industry at the same time that most people have been affected by failing public health systems and government agencies. Self-care has become a best-selling product, a buzzword that anyone can use to increase their bottom line. Because of this, it can be impossible to parse what

Nothing Like a Lockdown to Lock Down a Relationship Daphne Kalotay Share article Communicable by Daphne Kalotay The first time it happened—though she didn’t exactly take note—was when the plumber reemerged from the basement to report that the water was back on. He wore the kind of mask that protruded like a snout and kept

All too often, we find ourselves wishing we had said or done more when we lose someone, no matter the circumstance. That is the very nature of grief: It leaves us feeling robbed, of time, of memories that will remain unmade. But while all of us have known or will come to know grief at

This essay, by Logan Hoffman-Smith, is the third in Electric Literature’s new limited essay series, Both/And, which centers the voices of trans and gender nonconforming writers of color. For the next thirteen weeks, on Thursday, EL will publish an installment of Both/And, with the series running through spring and into Pride Month. At a time

A neighbor once told me that a woman died in my house. From then I was constantly looking in my house for signs—every creak was a footstep, every sound was a whisper, a loud scream. My mother says that the way Americans see death as a horror only tells half the story. The other half

I woke up earlier than usual on the Sunday morning Princess Diana’s death was splashed across the news. I knew my mom would want me to wake her up for this. When I told her what happened overnight in Paris, she leapt out of bed and hurried to the television, where she sat in silent

Writer and editor Nicole Chung is the author of the best-selling memoir All You Can Ever Know (Catapult, 2018), the story of the search for her Korean birth family and a challenge to the stereotyped rescue narrative of transracial adoption. In her new memoir, A Living Remedy (Harper Collins, 2023), she reflects on the circumstances

Like magic, narrative rearranges the world through words, and Kelly Link is one of modern fiction’s boldest alchemists. Her stories (which have now been collected into five books, and garnered Link a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” among other honors) make the familiar so strange it’s almost familiar again, spinning straw into ghosts and ghosts into disgruntled

If you’ve turned on a TV lately, you’ve likely heard more than enough ‘opinions’ from certain conservative news outlets about the trans community. In the face of hate, misinformation, and violence, standing up for one’s identity may begin to feel like fighting an endless war rather than an act of power. At Electric Literature, we’re

Like many children, I grew up scared of ghosts. I imagined their bodies hovering above my bed while I slept or looked away, their faces translucent and menacing.   But the more I grew up, the more I realised this made no sense. Ghosts are the soul of the deceased: why would I be their foe?

I’m cat-sitting tomorrow for a friend, the one with the apartment right over R Bar. They’re out of town to visit their Californian partner, a children’s toy engineer with pastel blue hair.  R Bar is the first place I think of when I hear about Club Q. R Bar and the cat I need to

To say that The Last Catastrophe is a dystopic take on humanity’s final hour is to miss the humor in these pages, as well as the tenderness in Allegra Hyde’s gaze. She is looking upon all of us—even those with the greatest culpability—as if she is sad to lose us and for us to lose

Terence Hammonds (American, born 1976), Hope, 2022, HD print on aluminum, 24 x 18 in. Photo by the artist Universal Magnetic: New Works by Terence Hammonds is currently showing at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hammonds’s works in Universal Magnetic feature collages that combine historical images with decorative motifs that adorn and memorialize representations of racial

This essay, by Autumn Fourkiller, is the second in Electric Literature’s new limited essay series, Both/And, which centers the voices of trans and gender nonconforming writers of color. For the next fourteen weeks, on Thursday, EL will publish an installment of Both/And, with the series running through spring and into Pride Month. At a time

Electric Literature is thrilled to reveal the cover for Vanessa Chan’s highly anticipated debut novel, The Storm We Made, which will be published by Marysue Rucci Books in January, 2024. Malaya, 1945. A family in harrowing danger: a missing teenage son, a youngest daughter locked away in a basement as the only means of preventing

You Will Want Me When I Disappear Thomas Renjilian Share article I’d Never Felt So Light by Thomas Renjilian The night my boyfriend switched from when to if while he talked about our future, I said I’d eat nothing but boiled carrots and egg whites until I dropped twelve pounds. One for each month we’d

In Gina Chung’s stunning debut novel, Sea Change, the familiar and unfamiliar mix harmoniously. A 30-year-old woman, Ro, finds herself adrift, struggling with a tense relationship with her mother, the disappearance of her father, a breakup with an ex who has left for Mars, and an unhealthy attachment to a cocktail called a “sharktini.” To

I’m in the fourth exam room with one of my last patients of the day, late afternoon light streaming in through the windows behind him. We’re about to go over the results of his scans after several months of therapy for metastatic kidney cancer, and as I turn from the computer screen, squinting against the