Literature

Real Family Grows Your Hair for You Baby Brother Shape-Up Half-brother and I grew up without much hair on our heads. Anthony was the boy and I was a girl, mistaken for a boy, we shared a barber. Mom said my hair was not right for ponytails, pigtails. With a barber’s help, I believed mom

Chana Porter’s new speculative novel The Thick and the Lean applies American sexual taboos to food and hunger, and gives the results some chilling terminology: Food Modesty and Flesh Martyrdom. Early parts of the story take place in the cult of Seagate, a planned community where members eat in the privacy of their own homes,

Tom Podmore / Unsplash In this creative nonfiction from London, a question once asked suspiciously becomes a question a man asks himself as a way of checking in. The first memory I have of this question is when, as a child, my family had run out of food. Even now, I don’t know the circumstances

As I prepare for the paperback launch of my debut novel The Girls in Queens, I share with a group of writers and artists that I’m putting together a Book Club Kit. This has become a fairly common digital offering; a colorful PDF of brief insights from the author, a recipe or two related to

“This is one of those stories that begins with a female body,” opens Erica Berry’s evocative exploration of wolves, fear, and the female experience, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear. Though the body Berry speaks of is not the human one we conjure in our minds, but that of a two-year-old

Illustration courtesy of the author Julius D. Jones is a talented and thought-provoking artist who cares deeply about humanity, justice, and peace. Despite being incarcerated for more than twenty years, Jones has independently published three books of poetry. To celebrate Julius’s birthday on July 25, two of his favorite poems along with one of his

Over the past fifteen years, I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with the peripatetic Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa on several occasions. In 2008 we were in conversation at the Brooklyn Book Festival—my first as a moderator—to celebrate the release of his novel The Book of Chameleons, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Photo by Oluwafikunmi Kilanko Among the shortlisted short stories for this year’s edition of the Caine Prize for African writing is Yejide Kilanko’s “This Tangible Thing,” which narrates a child’s journey of self-realization and self-affirmation. Kilanko is a Nigerian-born writer. Her debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Canadian national best-seller, was longlisted for the

The Scientific Method Does Not Apply to First Love Alexandra Chang Alexandra Chang is the author of the novel Days of Distraction. Share article Phenotype by Alexandra Chang People say that we don’t really know each other and that’s why we’re still together, but what everyone doesn’t see is that we understand each other perfectly fine.

It isn’t unusual for libraries to feature prominently in novels; novelists, after all, are merely adult versions of the little people who fell in love with books at public libraries. But what of librarians? The keepers of the books, the ones who know you prefer romance, science fiction, or self-help? You rarely see them as

Barbara Millicent Roberts is used to being a cultural tastemaker. Since the release of the first Barbie in 1959, there have been thousands of dolls; a slew of animated movies; a killer Instagram presence; and (finally!) Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, one of the most anticipated movies of 2023. And while Barb has her own book club,

The Most Iconic Barbie Story Ever Told AM Homes Share article A Real Doll by AM Homes I’m dating Barbie. Three afternoons a week, while my sister is at dance class, I take Barbie away from Ken. I’m practicing for the future. At first I sat in my sister’s room watching Barbie, who lived with

This conversation between AM Homes and Forever Barbie author MG Lord is part of Recommended Reading’s special issue of Homes’ iconic Barbie story, “A Real Doll.” MG Lord: It was Barbie that brought us together. I like that as an opening, especially when we’re discussing a short story that opens with the line, “I’m dating

Debut: The word connotes virginal daughters of the elite, gowned and gleaming, stepping lightly in heels through a ballroom and into high society. This summer brings my debut. I’m sixty-five. I wear orthotics, not heels, and step lightly through the Trader Joe’s parking lot. And rather than a high-society ritual, my debut is a novel—not

The first week of July, the Caine Prize for African Writing released its shortlist for this year’s edition of the prize. Among the nominated short stories is Ekemini Pius’s “Daughters, By Our Hands,” a speculative fiction that imagines a world in which women live and reproduce without contact with men. Pius is a Nigerian writer

Alif, the protagonist of Anjum Hasan’s latest novel History’s Angel, is borne by historical forces into an increasingly catastrophic future for India’s Muslims, even as his face remains turned toward the “reputedly more enlightened” and accommodating past. By profession and temperament a scholar of history, Alif’s perspective provides both solace and a heightened sense of

This Robot Runs on Empathy and Sunrises To Catch the Dual Sunrise 117 steps from camp I don’t think anyone noticed me leave camp and walk into the forest. Stealth mode activated, lights dimmed, footsteps soft. It’s not strictly forbidden, even if a command to explore wasn’t specified. Nevertheless, it’s best not to draw attention

Kathryn Savage / Photo by Melissa Lukenbaugh Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass (Coffee House Press, 2022) explores the health harms of living in a polluted world. The essay, closer to poetic elegy than journalism, begins after her father has died from a type of cancer that occurs at higher rates in polluted areas. Savage grew up in