Literature

Remember when Trump got elected and people started buying all the copies of 1984? It was like that, apparently, for Emily St. John Mandel in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and her 2014 post-apocalypse novel Station Eleven started once again flying off the shelves. The book is about a flu-like virus that kills almost

When I was approached to write this article, Ukraine’s battles for sovereignty were in the eastern parts of the country against Russian-backed separatists, where they have been since February 2014. In a few short days since, the Russian troops that had amassed around the border of Ukraine for months invaded the democratic country and initiated

A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already established high expectations? Klara and the Sun (Knopf, 2021) is particularly tricky because it revisits questions about life in posthuman futures, explored partly in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never

Stuck on a Train with Our Family Secrets Lost The train is lost. Halted in the middle of a grassland, it seems no one knows where we are. Ma says the clouds have shot the sun so it’s hard to tell the time of the day or the direction. I gaze at the string of

There are two kinds of detective stories.  In one, the detective is a constant. They march through the mystery at hand, gathering information, forming hypotheses, arriving at conclusions. These detectives are cleanly drawn, with distinctive habits and mannerisms and turns of phrases and sartorial choices, with lines that do not change. They serve the purpose

“Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies,” Roberto Bolaño, who enjoyed accruing enemies in the pantheon of Latin American letters, writes in the short story “Meeting with Enrique Lihn” (New Yorker, December 22, 2008): except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where

Picture a romance novel. Are there heaving bosoms and swaggering poses? Is the word “trashy” one of the first to pop into your mind? If so, your stereotypes are decades out of date. Recent years have seen a marked shift away from shirtless ab shots and “clinch covers” that feature a passionate embrace toward bright, flirty

How do you start writing when you’re incarcerated in prison? How do you establish a literary life without access to craft workshops, the internet, or even to the outside world? The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison, PEN America’s new writing handbook, addresses those questions to serve as “a road map

Cary Dubek becomes a gay icon overnight. He doesn’t do anything to earn his acclaim; his thirteen-year-old viral pop star brother, Chase Dreams, sings his second hit about him. “My Brother’s Gay and That’s Okay!” goes from gay hit to “no Moonlight” to Tomi Lahren catnip to camp. After a wild day of internet fame,

A longtime scholar, translator, and promoter of Ukrainian literature reflects on the existential crisis confronting Ukraine—and the West—today. In Pavlo Tychyna’s famous cycle of poems Instead of Sonnets and Octaves, written during the violence of the civil war in 1918–1920, the Ukrainian poet wrote: “Damnation to all, damnation to all who have become a beast!

[embedded content] Laura and Bunmi celebrate 41 books by Black authors. From Black joy to history to empowerment, the books on this list provide affirming messages for children and young adults with a special shout-out to NSK Neustadt Prize finalist Jason Reynolds. Which book “affirms Blackness like no other”? Which kept Bunmi and Laura on

Isaac Fellman’s novel Dead Collections is a sticky book. Content-wise, I mean: Its characters’ immediate concerns are largely driven by various liquids being too slow, too viscous, or in the wrong place altogether. Sol, the vampire archivist trans man protagonist—yes, all those things, keep up—needs regular blood transfusions to stay “alive,” or un-alive-but-sentient, however you

A Rock Collection Only a Mother Could Love Sindya Bhanoo Share article “Nature Exchange” by Sindya Bhanoo Behind the tennis courts, Veena finds the grassy clearing that has been fruitful for her. Since her move to the area a week and a half ago, she has found a dead monarch with its wings intact, and

Statue of renowned Kurdish historian, author, and poet Mastoureh Ardalan (1805–1848) in Erbil / Photo by Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash Even though they appear to have a lot to say about the historical, political, cultural, and literary situation of the Middle East, Kurdish female novelists and short-story writers have remained unknown to an international

Winter can be a difficult season, but luckily I know the cure for the winter blues: cozying up with a great book. But with all these “Best Of” and “Most Anticipated” lists that just came out, it’s hard to pick the right read. What a relief for you that this horoscope contains the definitive, perfect

My husband likes to tell a story from when he was eight years old, in Los Angeles, in 1975: His parents dropped him and his seven-year-old brother at the movies to see Disney’s animated 1942 classic Bambi, then in its fourth re-release. Their parents drove home, and as they walked in the door, the phone

Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: Kneeling in the Dojo (2013), City That Ripens on the Tree of the World (2013), and Luminous Other (2013), for which she received the Ashland Poetry Press 2012 Richard

Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: Kneeling in the Dojo (2013), City That Ripens on the Tree of the World (2013), and Luminous Other (2013), for which she received the Ashland Poetry Press 2012 Richard