Literature

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

In December 2024 (adjusted for the present rate of dystopic acceleration, several eons ago), T. M. Brown published an essay in The Atlantic whose title “You Might Be Worried About the Wrong Algorithms,” could double as a subtitle for William Lessard’s /face. Therein, Brown argues that our tendency to depersonalize the algorithms feeding us recommendations—that

The phrase “teenage girl” tends to conjure up images of hormonal bodies and see-sawing emotions—not focused and powerful brains. And yet, some of the most famous girls in literature gain exceptional mental gifts when they hit adolescence. Carrie White, for example, Stephen King’s telekinetic teenager, develops her cognitive power when she gets her period and

Both Mahreen Sohail and Dur e Aziz Amna’s work reflects a turning point in Pakistani literature: a move toward portraying lives as they are, unburdened by Pakistan as an ontological subject. Together, they represent a new guard of writers probing ambition, morality, and selfhood with nuance and precision. Sohail’s debut novel, Small Scale Sinners, is

Her Life in Seattle Doesn’t Translate to Beijing M Lin Share article “Yulan” by M Lin Yuchen sat in the back of the taxi as it turned onto Chang’an Avenue. Seventeen years ago, she had biked to high school on this ten-lane boulevard every day. So, so wide, she thought then. It had made her

I met Nora Lange in the dream space of the Brown Creative Writing MFA Program where I was teaching and she was a graduate student. As a student, she seemed all possibility, all wonder, and I, the witness to that nascent, vulnerable state of becoming. There was an openness, a tenderness and hope, an optimism, an irreverence,

Two years ago, I decided to end my career as a teacher to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing full-time. I was suddenly thirty-five in a kindergartner’s shoes again, fearful in anticipation of the first day of school. I sharpened my pencils, prepped my new notebook, and nervously registered for classes. Then, just before the

We all have that person in our life, the one who combines ambitious intentions with crippling self-sabotage. Often, they are unaware of this and perceive themselves as perfect, if only external circumstances didn’t prevent them from reaching their potential. A bad boss takes credit for their work; a realtor costs them a deal that would’ve