Literature

Photo by Moussa Kane “A Soul of Small Places,” by Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo, made history recently when it emerged as the first jointly conceived story shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing since the first award was made in 2000 to Leila Aboulela. Diene is a Franco–Senegalese American humanitarian based in Pretoria,

World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, will award the 2023 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature to Gene Luen Yang, the legendary graphic novelist. On Wednesday, Oct. 25, Yang will receive the $35,000 prize, a silver medallion and a certificate at a ceremony at

I can go back to the morning I learned my father was dead moment by moment, exactly as it occurred, like I’m there again. I’m twelve-years-old. I’m supposed to be at school. I creep up the stairs, and I see my sisters and mother sitting on the couch. They stop whispering the moment they see

During a workshop for one of the stories in my new collection, So Much Heart, my professor said, “And now, from Drew, we have another wacky couple adventure.” I laughed, but on the inside, I suddenly felt self-conscious, thinking my stories were too similar to each other. He was right. There are a lot of

Once at a party, I met an anesthesiologist. I’ve always been horrified and fascinated by anesthesiology, and I was a few wines in, so I cornered him. “Where do we go?” I demanded. “When we go under, where do we go?” He didn’t seem surprised to be accosted with this question. Instead, he moved closer

Tania Malik’s new coming-of-age novel, Hope You Are Satisfied, takes place in 1990s Dubai, during the lead-up to Operation Desert Storm. The story follows Riya, a twenty-something Indian immigrant sending money home to her family while working as a guide for “rinky-dink” tour company Discover Arabia. Riya has a fraught relationship with Dubai: she’s making money

Photo by Lorraine Kinnear Tlotlo Tsamaase’s science fiction “Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition),” which asserts a feminist agency and voice in a patriarchal and oppressive speculative world, was shortlisted for this year’s Caine Prize for African writing. Tsamaase is a Motswana author. Xer debut adult novel, Womb City, comes out in January 2024 from Erewhon Books. Xer

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,