Literature

Recently, I was slung across the couch with my young daughter, both of us blissfully full from dinner, limbs intertwined as we read before her bedtime. Her face was hidden behind a beloved Phoebe Wahl picture book, and perched on my soft belly was Emma Copley Eisenberg’s Housemates, a road trip story about two friends

First, let me explain my title: I like using “folklores” in the plural, since there isn’t such a thing as a single, monolithic Slavic folklore. There are many different Slavic folklores, all drawing on different influences and borrowing from various neighbours, creating a rich tapestry stretching across Eastern Europe. At the same time, despite all

The Other Time a Grown Man Threatened My Life Juliet Escoria Juliet Escoria is the author of the novel Juliet the Maniac. She also wrote the poetry collection Witch Hunt  and the story collection Black Cloud. She was born in Australia, raised in San Diego, and currently lives in West Virginia. Share article An excerpt from YOU

You may or may not realize it, but the 1990s weren’t just a few years ago, not even just twenty years ago. Though the style has been resurrected of late by younger generations eager to grift the gritty grunge and combat boots of the final decade of the 20th century, and the same slip dresses

Bookstores are often literary safe havens for readers and places to build community through author readings, book signings, book clubs, or perhaps just bumping into a stranger in a niche genre section and exchanging numbers (a girl can dream!). From hybrid bookstore/coffee shops to bookstores that double as presses, we’ve curated a list of fourteen Black-owned

I found Greg Mania through the magic of the algorithm somewhere deep in quarantine, and the feeling I had was that I was late to the party. You could say I was right given their long list of bylines, but you could also say he curated that feeling via brilliant and relentless marketing tactics. Born

Nina St. Pierre’s debut memoir, Love Is a Burning Thing, began with a question: “Who starts two fires?” Before St. Pierre was even born, her mother and a friend lit themselves on fire in a dual suicide attempt. Years later, St. Pierre’s mother started another fire that shook the foundation of their lives. St. Pierre

As a queer girl growing up in small-town Scotland, I’ve always been attracted to stories about characters who don’t fit in. Better yet: those whose strangeness is their source of power.  My debut novel, Freakslaw, opens with an epigraph from The Craft: “We are the weirdos, mister.” It’s what one of the teen girl witches

A train is a perfect setting for a story, with its confined space, its forward momentum, its promise of change and adventure. Whether thundering along the Californian coast, spending days staring out at Russian forests and tundra, or blinking as the Japanese countryside whips past too quickly to take in, I’ve been lucky enough to

Nurses Make for Good Bullets Due to lack of furniture, my mother’s bedroom is the center of operations. The TV is always on unless I turn it off. The fire alarm beeps for new batteries every few minutes, but we’ve gotten good at ignoring it for the most part. The blankets are psychedelic shades of

The late Chuck Kinder once told me, “Fiction should be a fist.” Meaning fiction is a medium suited to emotional honesty, the place to have adult conversations. To engage with the world in all its complexities, and, often, its ugliness. For me, this has meant writing characters who either confront oppression, assist in oppression, or

you know the one, wherepikachu slaps pikachu in the face, both entirelyflowering with tears, as one says pikachu, arms thrown back like a wishbone, as the other says pikachu,head heavy and lips parted. it’s too easy to saythat i am the pikachu being struck, that i am the waythey fall and roll like a wound

I heard Garrard Conley read from the research note for his first novel, All the World Beside, at an AWP reading earlier this year and was thoroughly riveted. In voicey, animated prose—he notably calls French philosopher Michel Foucault “Daddy Foucault”—he discussed the work of finding queer spaces within 18th century, Puritan New England, a task

“What about civility? Respect for the people one loves? Discretion, for god’s sake?” asks Lucy Douglas “C.Z.” Guest, the enigmatic socialite and fashion icon played by Chloë Sevigny in Ryan Murphy’s latest installation of the Feud series, Capote vs. the Swans. Across from her sits the American novelist and screenwriter Truman Capote (Tom Hollander), author

Grandma’s Fiancé Requires Our Full Adversarial Response Caroline Beimford Share article No Picnic by Caroline Beimford Each afternoon at five minutes to four, Gigi emerged, descended from the mezzanine, and filled three glasses with ice, Tanqueray, and a pimento olive. A freezer beneath the wet bar produced small, gem-like cubes of unusual translucence and the

For the last thirteen years, wherever I’ve taught, I’ve always been one of the only teachers of color. Having taught college, high school, and middle school, I’ve navigated each space as “other.” I often feel like an outsider with the very people I work with, in part because so few of them understand what it’s

I love it when a text centers the dynamics of conversation. In my own life, talking to others gets me out of my head, and introduces me to possibilities I would never have dreamed of alone. I think of a quote by the activist Valerie Kaur, which my local bookshop has printed on some of

Drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup with chewed rim. Choosing hotel rooms based on which has the fewest number of 2 A.M. fights in the parking lot. Calling your guy in Pittsburgh from a payphone in Dayton to ask about the Tampa connection who might be dead. This is the America of Carroll’s fifth book