Literature

In the process of publishing my book, I learned that there exists an entire category labeled “Spiritual Fiction.” Fascinated, I investigated which books fall into this category, and I winced. Mostly, I found books of two extremes. Extreme number 1: Books in which religious life is idealized well past the point of sentimentality (as in,

Carla Lonzi’s germinal feminist text, Sputiamo su Hegel (Let’s Spit on Hegel) is the secret beating heart of HBO’s latest season of My Brilliant Friend–based on Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet. Published in 1970 by the Italian feminist collective, Rivolta Femminile, Lonzi’s Sputiamo su Hegel

My Mom Doesn’t Recognize Me But Neither Do I Wendy Wimmer Share article Ghosting by Wendy Wimmer The insurance company sent over a fat nurse. There was no polite way to put it—she was fat. No matter what would happen, no matter what I said, no matter that she was only there to make sure

In the second part of my book, Daughters of the New Year, one of the main characters, Xuan, goes to an athletic club with her mother. The Cercle Sportif was a real athletic club in Saigon, opened in 1902 for French colonials and Vietnamese social elite. There were tennis courts, a football field, sailboats, and

I first laid eyes on the Foo Fighters in England back in 1997 as they walked out onto the main stage of a newly formed rock festival. Dave was beardless, Taylor had short hair, and they played their set while it was still light out—somewhere between Prodigy and Placebo—because not many people knew about them

Lydia Millet has a well earned reputation as a climate novelist, which means the weather is in her books. Not just the weather; there are floods and hurricanes, she includes the names of birds and trees and cactuses, she observes tidal patterns and migrations. She includes these things because this is the world we live

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, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of

Translated Korean literature in the English-speaking world has seen a remarkable growth in the past couple of years, the rise of which has been propelled by the Smoking Tigers, a small but mighty cohort of nine literary translators working from Korean to English. Collectively, they have translated a diverse range of books: a mind-boggling sci-fi

When I left my career in publishing four years ago to take a job that allowed me to focus more on my writing, I found myself in a very precarious and emotionally fraught moment in life. I hadn’t written a word in nearly two years, I was feeling beaten down by the industry and capitalism

Porn and weddings: two of America’s most beloved forms of sexual fantasy. The former imagines a world where the fucking is both constant and constantly good, while the latter plays out a virginity pageant in which the indelicate deed doesn’t happen at all until marriage. Whether the fetish gear of choice is a white dress

From the Showtime series Yellowjackets to the upcoming Timothée Chalamet film Bones and All to the increasingly unsettling allegations against the actor Armie Hammer, cannibalism is having a moment—in popular culture, anyway. Literature has long been fascinated with this particular form of savagery, which found an unexpected home in my forthcoming book, The Goddess Effect. 

Every few months, it seems there is an eruption over cultural appropriation in the literary world. Writers and readers who share an identity take issue with the portrayal of their community by a writer from outside of their community. Fellow writers, especially those from outside of this community come to the defense of this writer,

What It’s Worth Giving Up to Stay in a Family Manuel Muñoz Share article “Compromisos” by Manuel Muñoz Mauricio would stop and buy the oranges on his way back into town. He would need them as a treat for his young daughter, Rocío. She had the unfortunate gift of sensing unease in a silent room

The first movie I saw in theaters was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It’s perhaps my earliest memory, I was two years old. My brother, who was three, was afraid of the beast and had to be escorted out of the theater. I, however, was quite taken with the monster. I think about this experience

I’ve been wanting to see Jordan Peele’s Nope in theaters for a while now, but I feel uncertain about it. I’ve never been much of a moviegoer, but I make an exception for iconic Black films. I saw Get Out three times when it first released; currently, I have only seen one movie in theaters

The VHS tapes waited inside a small pull-out cabinet: Frankenstein. Dracula. The Mummy. The Wolf Man. All of these movies had been recorded off Syfy. Early ’90s Sci-Fi Channel, as it was then spelled, was a television treasure. It was dark, it was scary, and to my child’s mind it seemed to reveal the hidden

Display Me in the Museum’s Secret Room Museum in the back of the museum is the oldest room the door is always shut but unlocked when you go in no one will stop you no one else is ever inside the ceilings are low dark hushed still air in the room a dozen glass boxes

Sometimes the only way to approach history, particularly a history that has excluded you or one which you felt trapped inside, is to deface it. Defacing—like a form of graffiti—can take the form of literally writing or collaging on top of the record so that your words are visible, but so is the history you