Literature

The Northwest, where I live and where my novel is set, is a big place and it is a lot of things. It is the damp, mossy woods of the coast, the high desert, and the snowy, jagged mountain ranges that divide the two. It is home to weird and real creatures like giant octopuses,

The Künstlerroman is having a moment—at least according to novelist Erin Somers, who earlier this year published an essay in Gawker examining the “resurgence of a [German] word for a specific kind of novel, a novel about an artist coming into maturity.” This was welcome news to me, as both a lover of the genre

In Abigail Stewart’s novel, The Drowned Woman (published by Whiskey Tit, May 5, 2022) 23-year-old Jeanette has traveled west to start a new life, along with a graduate program in Art History. The narrative initially reveals little of Jeanette’s past, offering a portrait of her as she is now–creatively doling out her minimal dollars for

We are thrilled to announce that Electric Literature has won the prestigious Whiting Literary Magazine Prize! This highly competitive award recognizes excellence in digital and print magazines, and supports winners with an outright grant in the first year, followed by two years of a matching grant, and ongoing professional development.  The panel of anonymous judges

When CJ Hauser published “The Crane Wife” in The Paris Review, an essay about repressing her needs in a relationship, calling off a wedding, and going to study whooping cranes on the Gulf Coast, it quickly became a viral hit. Three years later, her 17-piece memoir in essays of the same name offers us more

Mom Shouldn’t Have to Die for You to Enjoy Her Company Matthew Lansburgh Share article “Last Night in Ventana Beach” by Matthew Lansburgh Two days after his mother’s funeral, forty-six hours after he put on the least baggy of his ill-fitting suits to say his final, convulsive goodbyes, Stewart stopped by the Vons closest to

It’s 2015. Zainab, Funmi, and Enitan are reuniting for Funmi’s daughter, Destiny’s wedding. The three have grown up since their university days in Zaria where they had first met, their friendship off to a rocky start with personality clashes, Funmi stealing Zainab’s boyfriend, and Enitan always left to play the peacemaker. A bond develops over

Going through a randomized supercuts of digital home videos my parents sent me during the first Christmas season of the pandemic, I held my breath in anticipation of my “dance recital.” A 7-year-old me prances to “Pretty Woman” between sheets hung from the popcorn ceiling tiles in my parents’ finished basement, spotlit by a single

I wanted to move to New York from the time I first learned what New York was. I grew up on a farm and dreamed about moving to the city the way some kids dream about becoming marine biologists. I wanted to be part of the city that never sleeps. The not sleeping part can

School’s Out and the War Is On The Hole in the Wall  It was 1968 and three days after the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. There was supposed to be a festival for Mau Than, The Year of the Monkey. The food was prepared to welcome the New Year, where the festivities would have begun with fireworks at the zero

I tend to overthink. At some point, I started writing my thoughts down as a way of purging them from my mind. It’s less like journaling and more like a raw, incoherent document on my desktop that functions as my own private exorcism. I think part of me also wanted proof that I wasn’t just

Alice Elliott Dark’s Fellowship Point is an abundantly generous novel, rich in the love of a lifelong friendship and the beauty of Maine in the summer. It opens with a map of its titular location—a small peninsula where five wealthy Philadelphia Quaker families established summer homes decades ago. Fellowship Point is private property, a fact

Aviva Rosner wants a baby. She tries for two years, to no avail. She dreads the start of her monthly cycle. She gets her husband’s fertility tested. She cuts alcohol and sugar out of her diet. In her career as a singer-songwriter, she puts out an album called Womb Service which, in part, is about

Before the vampire, I loved wearing clothes. I saw my wardrobe as a textile collection of myself in all my various fits and moods, and each day, my task was to find the best combination of clothing to wear that would project to the world my current state. I loved getting up each morning and

Morgan Talty’s The Night of the Living Rez is a searching and honest collection of short stories following a young Penobscot character named David and his coming of age on the rez, where community, family, and tradition are as fraught with colonial entanglement as they are forces for healing.  With hyperreal and welcoming prose, Talty

Never Marry a Man with a Human Mother K-Ming Chang Share article Xífù I don’t mean I want her to die. I’m just saying, what kind of woman pretends to kill herself six times? I’m saying that she loves to pretend. Some women are like that. They don’t know what real means. Like that neighbor I had back

The unnamed narrator of NSFW begins her story by telling us she’s in a toxic relationship with the city of Los Angeles. She hates it; she loves it; she never wants to leave. This opening confession sets the scene for a riveting workplace drama in which the narrator attempts to climb Hollywood’s unforgiving ranks at

As a teenager, I loved to hole up in my room with my mother’s back issues of Gourmet Magazine and read through recipes I had no way of making: Florentine boar ragu! Spaghetti with ramps! Vietnamese spring rolls stuffed with bean thread noodles, wood ear mushrooms, grated carrot, and ground pork shoulder! (Ruth Reichl really