Literature

In 1937, on the bank of the river Ravi in Lahore, the 10-year-old protagonist of my novel realizes that he is affected by smell in a way that others are not. On that day, he is inducted as an apprentice to his uncle at the family’s perfume shop, and so begins the formal education of

Oh, rejection, rejection, wherefore art thou rejection? Deny my genius and refuse my praise? Or if thou wilt, take all myself and I’ll no longer be a writer. At the end of the day, all writers must ask themselves: to query or not to query? You know what they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Dear

There’s No Place Like Jersey for the Holidays Drew Nelles Share article Iceland by Drew Nelles After fifteen years of vegetarianism, I recently gave into despair and started eating meat. I’m also trying to quit smoking again, which means I’ve gained a bit of weight. It isn’t much—only five or ten pounds—and anyway, since I

Heads emerge from toilets, constructed from our own debris. Birth control pills lead to pregnancy. Foxes bleed gold. People connect over ghost-watching. In Cursed Bunny, Bora Chung takes us on an unforgettable journey through folkloric caves and modern-day apartments, unearthing the horror and injustice that are engrained in the fabric of human civilization.  I refused

I was a young MFA student when I attended my first artists’ residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. I had heard of these places nestled in the woods or in small-town America where writers and artists were provided with a private bedroom and studio space, as well as meals or a

These Shoes Were Made for End Times Demonic Possession Secondary to Femoral Fracture No one is allowed to speak of the dictator’s wife in ways not flattering. This information was procured by our best agents and shoe-shine boys. How, in the mid-seventies, she fell and fractured her right hip – only slightly so – non-

As a poet, Hafizah Augustus Geter understands the power of language to shape places, lives, and possibilities. In her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin, she stands on a precipice, gazing out on the story she lives inside of—a “story begotten by White America.” That story, of course, is painted over

Dear Sugar Plum Fairy, Snow King and Queen, Dewdrop Fairy, Dewdrops, Turkish Twirlers, Mother Ginger, Mother Ginger’s Bébés, Dancing Flowers, Spanish Dancers, Arabian Dancers, Chinese Dancers, Soldiers, Dolls, Rats, Producers, Nutcracker Stans, and beloved Mice: I’m Angelina Jeanette Mouseling from Chipping Cheddar, UK, born in 1983. Better known as Angelina Ballerina, I’ve danced ballet my

In a time of great collective precarity—both political and economic—long-held literary greats came through with novels that asked the burning questions of this era. Searing debuts pierced the literary establishment, extraordinary novels explored desire and ambition, yearning and loss. They featured protagonists with the intelligence and integrity to examine their former selves alongside their current

The first graphic novelist to be nominated for the Booker Prize, Nick Drnaso possesses an uncanny ability to tap into the bleak, nihilistic undercurrents of American culture, and to depict these undercurrents just before they swirl to the surface. Zadie Smith called Sabrina, Drnaso’s Booker Prize-nominated novel, about the distressed, grieving boyfriend of a murdered

Whether it’s urging fellow essayists to reject conventional writing wisdom or subverting the expected emotional responses to the death of a parent, much of 2022’s best nonfiction has been about reclaiming narratives: of the body, of the self, of religion and sex and popular culture. Exploring everything from the murky depths of the ocean floor

The Diminishing Returns of a Prodigal Crush Mark Chiusano Share article Swiss Summer by Mark Chiusano Teresa saw him out of the corner of her eye first, her usual lunchtime walk off the Bahnhofstrasse bringing her past a glittering section of the lake. Just a touch of the lake every afternoon to get her through

When it comes to short fiction, the past year has been filled to the brim with stellar collections that have opened our eyes and hearts to worlds beyond the one we inhabit. These stories are liminal, surreal, and global. They celebrate families—both chosen and biological—as well as ambition, desire, myths, and the bodies that house

Tis the season for some literary pageantry and Electric Literature is hosting our third annual “Best Book Cover of the Year” tournament. You, our beloved readers, will decide a winner amidst a sea of book covers that published in 2022 via an interactive poll on our Twitter and Instagram stories starting today. We encourage you to embrace the competitive

There’s no denying that this has been an exceptional year for poetry. Throughout 2022, we’ve read intimate, lyrical, political poetry that has experimented in all areas of craft, most notably form. But what has been, perhaps, most exciting, has been the return of many of our most well-loved masters, all of whom have managed to

The poems in Michael Chang’s latest collection, Almanac of Useless Talents, are punk jazz or noise hip hop—avant-garde and anarchist. Intertextual and reality. Surreal and real. Ugly and pretty. Crystal-clear and obscure. Confident and confessional. Serious and absurd. I speak in binaries, but Chang’s poems are anything but. They deconstruct binaries. Poetry is often the

Your Zoom Camera Is Not a Mirror “Authors Fidget Online” by Michael Dahlie At the beginning of her reading, this lifestyle memoirist announced that she was struggling to quit vaping and, thus, would be chewing nicotine gum that evening. It was clear that her efforts were not going well, however, and during the presentation she

This has been a particularly powerful year for Latinx and Caribbean diaspora poetry. While perusing these ten collections, two vital things made themselves abundantly clear: this first is just how strongly interwoven our community truly is. Many of the poets in this list reference each other, whether through poem dedications or in the acknowledgements pages