Literature

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

In school, my favorite books were either banned or censored from my school and public libraries. Books like Stephen Bantu Biko’s I Write What I Like, Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy, and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother. I learned something blandly boring and yet extraordinarily potent in those books: Black folks’ tall and full humanity could be

Photo by Chris Ensminger / Unsplash Wolf Food (prologue) by Marina and Sergey Dyachenkotranslated by Katie Kassam In this prologue to a science-fiction novella, Волчья сыть (Volch’ia syt’), the reader is introduced to many oblique references that hint at the wider society and history crafted by the Dyachenkos, as well as the true nature of

Photo by Evelyn Paris / Unsplash National Anthem This is my room, itis called Iceland. A sea cable fastensit to Europe and to here andfrom here fly airplanes withtheir ink cartridges full of people. Here I dwell in a matchboxthat I care for, deeply –I even painted it on the insidelast winter. Life carries on

We Are Gathered Here Today to Eat, Drink, and Be Ruthless Christine Sneed Share article Wedding Party by Christine Sneed 1 It was the bride’s second marriage, the groom’s third. They were both in their thirties, but Kim wasn’t sure if the groom was fibbing about his age—half of his face was hidden behind a

Women’s achievements have long been overlooked in the annals of history, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of science. When I first began digging into the history of nineteenth-century geology for my novel Our Hideous Progeny, I was shocked to find how many women were actually working in the field, considering

A cover is all about disclosure. A cover may encase a book but its purpose is to encourage readers to pry open its pages. A cover is as much an invitation as it is a revelation. This I’ve long understood in the abstract, but it wasn’t until the design proofs for my own came in

Horror is queer. I don’t make the rules.  From the moment Carmilla sprang onto Laura’s bed to when M3GAN murder-danced her way down the red hall, the horror genre has been dominated by queer icons—and loved by queer audiences as well. While the subtext-entrenched classics remain iconic, the past few years have inspired explicitly queer

One school morning in 2012, I woke up at home and alone. Everyone else was on holiday and I stayed behind by request. The class activity that day in high school was a debate about abortion. I was excited to participate – argument formulation was a strength of mine, and anything beat having homework. Regrettably,

For 17 books, Luis Alberto Urrea has highlighted the joys and sorrows of life along the U.S.-Mexican border, a territory which moves with its peoples, no matter the walls we build on the land and in our hearts. Through his memoir Nobody’s Son, novels like The House of Broken Angels, his essay and poetry collections,

The Bluest Crab at Grandpa’s Funeral The following story was chosen by Anthony Doerr as the winner of the 2023 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. The prize is awarded annually by Selected Shorts and a guest author judge. Subscribe to Selected Shorts wherever you get your podcasts to hear this story performed by an actor in

Penelope Schleeman never thought she’d write a bestseller, but she’s trying to make the most of it. In the wake of her debut’s unexpected success, she departs her teaching job for Hollywood in order to adapt American Mermaid for the big screen. But as her co-writers’ suggestions tug and twist her beloved protagonist’s story further