Literature

In 2016, I compiled a list of books I’m anticipating by women writers of color because, as a reader, writer, and occasional critic, I couldn’t find many such titles. If I was having trouble, I thought, then others surely were, too. Perhaps they’d also find the list useful. The first list was one of Electric

What even is time? I had a couple conversations this past year, some of them surrounding the publication of my non chronologically-structured novel We Do What We Do in the Dark, during which the concept of “queer time” came up, this idea that LGBTQ people experience time differently, almost four-dimensionally like Vonnegut aliens. We constantly

There is a point in my novel No One Knows Us Here when my heroine does a very, very bad thing. She doesn’t have to do the bad thing—it’s not one of those “steal a loaf of bread to feed her starving family” situations. She has other options and chooses to go down the dark

It’s More Dangerous to Stand Still Mom on the Beach My mother, with two knee replacements, asked us to take her to the beach. She conjured for us warm, bright afternoons, salt breeze tickling skin, and starfish basking in their rocky pools. She told it like we might find deep truths in some sparkling sea

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?” we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This month we feature Ruth Joffre, author of the short story collection Night Beast, whose fiction appears or is forthcoming in The Florida Review Online, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Wigleaf

This past summer, an auntie of mine dusted off an old cardboard box of books from a cluttered storage unit, and handed me a slim blue and gold paperback with soft, slightly frayed corners and a creased spine by Octavia E. Butler. I had never read science fiction that featured a Black girl being so

Over the holidays, we asked our social media followers to vote for the best book cover of 2022 and after an especially close competition, a crowd favorite won the hearts of book lovers. From 32 beautiful cover designs, here are the semi-finalists: Valley of Want by Ross White, cover design by Ross White vs. Burning Butch by R/B

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