Literature

M. Evelina Galang explores the many manifestations of what it means to be Filipina and Filipina American across decades, countries, and moments of political poignance in her new short story collection When the Hibiscus Falls.  Returning to the short story form for the first time since her 1996 debut Her Wild American Self, Galang dreams

Sports, sci fi shows, and Stephen King were the most consistent topics of conversation for my father and I. Of the many hours I spent alone with him as a teenager, I don’t remember talking about much else. Perhaps this reveals us as one-dimensional and simple, or maybe even a little stereotypical (rough-around-the-edges Dad, lesbian

One of my favorite short story writers, Eudora Welty, once said: “Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tired. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.” Place, or setting, is something

Kiah Holliman’s car accident happened on the last icy day of February 2022. The following morning, clear blue sky lit my journey from Detroit to Grand Rapids, melting any remaining ice from the night before. The earth seemed to smile, soaking in the long-missed sunshine. As the world inhaled the first hint of spring, my

I am 33-years-old, just young enough that I feel like I can still reach out and touch my 20s. The early years of adulthood were full of discovery, joy, and energy (you really can drink an entire bottle of wine at dinner and then go to work the next day with nothing more than some

Photo by NancieLee Free at last. Free at last.Thank God almighty, we’re free at last. “[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion

  Jem Bendell is a known scholar on societal collapse who rose to prominence in 2018 with his academic paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Discussed in popular media and academia, the paper has been downloaded more than a million times since its release, which is a truly impressive number for an

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