Literature

Growing up in the early 1980s with an obstetrician-gynecologist mother, one would imagine that I would be well informed when it came to issues like puberty, reproduction, sex, and sexuality. Instead, I was quite sheltered and restricted when it came to these topics. As the child of Indian immigrant doctors, we didn’t talk about any

Writing addressed to a specific “you” generates an effect unlike the electricity of classic second-person narratives. Instead of a jolt, direct-address writing delivers a subtler charge, like opening someone else’s mail or overhearing one end of an emotionally raw monologue.  While drafting The Skin and Its Girl, I found myself adrift in a storyline that spans 200 years

Plant Care Is Self-Care How to Befriend Houseplants Watch the accompanying video directed by Josh Sondock & Sam Cutler-Kreutz. Click on images to enlarge. Take a break from the news We publish your favorite authors—even the ones you haven’t read yet. Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your inbox. YOUR INBOX IS LIT Enjoy

London has served as the setting for many a novel—the backdrop to tales of scrappy orphans and drunk, dancing thirty-somethings, of marmalade-adoring bears and magical nannies. It’s also, of course, the setting for so many love stories.  Not quite as romantic as Paris, nor as hustle-and-bustle-y as New York, London sits somewhere in the middle,

Some of the best moments of my life have been spent in libraries, first as a patron, later as a librarian, and I have witnessed firsthand how hard the past few decades have been on libraries. As America has continued to dismantle its social safety net, libraries have been forced to pivot from being a

As LGBTQ+ literature continues to evolve and incorporate more diverse experiences into the canon, it’s such an interesting time for romances featuring bisexual leads. There are f/f stories, m/m stories, stories with nonbinary leads and love interests, and, of course, m/f, the often overlooked branch of the bisexual tree. And with that widely varied combination

A Prayer: A Libation to Our Sisters “Ori is coming from Heaven to Earth If my head is behind me, I will be successful in this world.” -Ogunda Meji 1 Before you were born, your spirit lived at home with us. We were close—a bond that could never break. Played patty cakes and breathed in

The books on this list explore the challenges faced by women from diverse backgrounds as they fight against patriarchal structures such as religious sects, border controls, and even humanity. Their battles take place across wide-ranging landscapes as territories act simultaneously as sites for confinement, flight, connection, creativity, and evolution. The women in these stories use

The Only Thing We Have in Common Is Sweaty Desperation Jon Elofson Share article Percent by Jon Elofson We met at the apex of a New York heatwave via an app designed to facilitate anonymous sex between gay men. The sky was low, touching the trees, and the sun refused to set. It was early

We never learn the name of the protagonist in Anna Metcalfe’s debut novel, Chrysalis, a detail that feels fitting in a book that is in part about how much—or little—we can ever truly know about the people who populate our lives. We experience the protagonist from the perspective of three different onlookers: Elliot, a man

When I was a teenager, my uncle Jesse Ausubel decided to count all the fish in the sea. He’s not crazy. The Census of Marine Life, which Jesse conceived of with a colleague one July afternoon in the late 90s, is the story of the oceans, past, present, and future. It was an unprecedented ten-year,

Photo by Sofya Badkhen “We Live Without Touch” is a found poem. Composed of fourteen English translations of the first two lines of a famous 1933 poem by Osip Mandelstam, it is a timely meditation that amplifies the lines. We live, but feel no land at our feet,Our senses grew numb in this country of

Plants don’t make the easiest protagonists. They’re largely silent and immobile; they rarely emote; they lack big brown eyes. When I consider the sub-genre of novels about famous writers’ pets (Woolf’s Flush, Nunez’s Mitz), I glance apologetically at the half-dead succulent on my windowsill. When will it have its day?  Honestly, I often feel this

My Student Loans Would Prefer Me Dead Click on images to enlarge Forgiveness Your Job Take a break from the news We publish your favorite authors—even the ones you haven’t read yet. Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your inbox. YOUR INBOX IS LIT Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays,

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for writer Ross White’s poetry collection, Charm Offensive, which will be published by Eyewear Publishing this July. White is the designer and author of Valley of Want, a finalist for Electric Lit’s Best Book Cover of 2022 contest. Charm Offensive, Ross White’s debut poetry collection, explores the space

There’s a quote from novelist John Green that wonderfully captures the power and magic of shopping indie: “You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that’s the secret weapon of the bookstore—no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.” In

Rachel Heng’s sophomore novel is a sprawling, scrupulously researched marvel. At once a coming-of-age love story and a tale of political turmoil that takes readers through decades of Singaporean history, The Great Reclamation follows its smart but shy protagonist, Ah Boon, from childhood into adulthood, as he falls in love, makes his way beyond the

When I got a callback over a year ago for the leading lady in a musical revival Billy Porter was set to direct in New York, I sang for Porter himself.  It was the second project of his I had gotten a callback for that year, having come in for the lead of a trans