Literature

The Toughest Fish in the Barrel The Old World Sunrise Foods, just a few blocks from my house, is marked by a glossy freestanding sign, a cheery egg-yolk yellow against an often gray, wintering Toronto sky. Back in December, just before I turned 14, Tracey “with an e” recruited a bunch of us from the

Kenan Orhan’s debut, I Am My Country, feels like much more than just a book of imaginative short stories set in and around the author’s ancestral homeland of Turkey. The powerful collection could be said to comprise a series of real “small rebellions” — enacted by its characters, prose, and the political implications of writing

Photo by Lucas Calloch / Unsplash Japanese Garden I curve like a wooden bridgeover a lake lit up by red carpsI am hard and dry and barely adornedlike a sand garden(though there are stones that blossomlike flowers)silent like rice paperon whichnothinghas yet been written What Do I Know? I know few things I know that

I wake early each morning, before the kids, to write and see the real city—my private Brooklyn curving in on itself, the prose poem of citywide snow removal and garbage pick-ups, geese migrating over Kings County rooftops in V-formation. The humor, the horror, the wonder. How to chronicle it all? I don’t feel like it’s

There’s something viscerally appealing about nesting dolls. The same holds true, I’d argue, for nesting narratives. Each new layer to the story can either reveal or obscure the capital-t Truth at its center. Sometimes both! As a magazine writer and editor, I’m particularly aware of the difficulties intrinsic to writing about other people’s lives. Nesting

Photo by Why Kei / Unsplash Jung’s Yong-jun’s short story “Disappearing Things,” from his collection A Walk along Seoulleung, won the Moonji Literary Award in 2019. The story’s protagonist, Seong-soo, lost his young daughter in a terrible accident. After that, his life became full of unknowns. The one thing he knows is that his mother,

The Perfect Beach Weather for Every Gender Marne Litfin Share article Daisies by Marne Litfin Neither of my girlfriends would take me to the beach. When I told Miller, they yelped into the phone like they’d broken a toe: But it’s summer! That’s what summer is for! And you live so close! Their voice cracked,

The late Anthony Bourdain died in 2018, but his Twitter account is still up and viewable. The way he describes himself in the bio, to his 6.4 million followers?  A single word: Enthusiast. It’s certainly the way he lived his life, rising from the culinary underbelly of New York City to become a celebrity after

Hours before my toddler announces daybreak with her cry, when the night shadows start to play their old tricks on my nerves and insecurity paints over my creative plans, it’s the stories of the women writers who have come before me that I crave most. I want to feel, down to the sheet-gripping tips of

They say it’s what’s on the inside the counts—except, of course, when you are a book cover, and your entire existence relies on looking pretty and being judged.  That’s right, folks. You know it, you love it. We here at Electric Lit have once again asked our lovely followers on Instagram and Twitter to vote

I came to writing at thirty—after touring the worlds of fashion editorial and luxury public relations, after doing a master’s in anthropology, after declining an offer to complete a doctorate in the field, after beginning an MFA in creative writing, only to leave after a semester. With each successive pivot, I grew not only more

It’s not a spoiler to say that one woman whips out a switchblade, or that another’s boozy airplane ride leads to a warrant for her arrest. Though this is a spy novel, it’s not even a spoiler to say that one woman is stalking the other—and then their roles reverse.  While novelist Helen Schulman’s new

I don’t experience my dreams from a first-person point of view. My gaze exists only as a third-person stranger at a theater, watching it all like a film. The whole spectacle even comes with letterboxes and sometimes subtitles as well to complete the experience. After all the skin is ripped apart, all the blood is

I first fell in love with Salem in Istanbul, Turkey. We were both journalists and dreamed of seeing the world, and being the ones to witness and document history as it happened. There was just one problem: Salem was from Syria with a passport that essentially meant he was stuck in the Middle East. I

Dear Chatbot, Should I Write About My Dead Mother? A conversation between Ethan Gilsdorf and ChatGPT This conversation was edited and condensed for length and clarity. Should I write about my dead mother?Yes, you should write about your dead mother if you feel compelled to do so. Writing about someone you care about can be

One of the hardest things about feeling out of place is the loneliness. Living somewhere where the bulk of your software isn’t compatible with the system everyone else is running on. The people around you got their own problems, of course, but for them, it’s not a matter of the system not accepting who they

Photo by Bekky Bekks / Unsplash Hoping to see more peace and empathy in the world, a high school teacher in San Francisco creates a Peace Club where, in yielding control of an event to a sixteen-year-old, she finds the door to collective joy and collective grieving. Balaji turned off the classroom lights and joined

In a cultural milieu that is increasingly recognizing the value of narratives that describe the experience of chronic pain and illness, Emily Wells’ memoir is a unique contribution. In some ways, A Matter of Appearance is not a memoir at all, though that’s where you’ll find it shelved in bookstores. To be sure, Wells’ story