Literature

Chris Belcher’s searing memoir about her work as a professional dominatrix isn’t exactly a comfortable read. Not because of the subject, but because Pretty Baby asks more of the reader than many memoirs. Like the best art does, this book invites introspection and interrogation of both our own lives and society at large.  Belcher grew

Forget Cashmere and Angora, Buy 100% Human Hair Sayaka Murata Share article “A First-Rate Material” by Sayaka Murata It was a holiday, and I was enjoying chatting with two girlfriends from university days over afternoon tea. Through the window, the gray office buildings of the business district sat beneath a cloudless sky. Reservations at this hotel lobby

Safia Elhillo’s much anticipated second poetry collection, Girls That Never Die, spins an incredible lyric around gender, body, desire, and control. The book yearns for a quest to be free, while living in a world where the body is policed by so many forces: womanhood, community gossip, changing countries, racism, islamophobia, language, self-censorship, secret love,

Before we begin, I must confess to my bias. I am not an objective reader, so in some ways I have already failed. A few months before I read Elif Batuman’s debut novel The Idiot, I had a conversation with a friend that unlocked a safe in my brain. After, there was nowhere I could

Most writing about the climate crisis focuses on large-scale events like extreme weather, wildfires, and flooded coastlines—and for good reason. Such events impact the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. But how might the crisis affect us in smaller, more intimate ways? How are we seeing it manifest at the level of a life,

The Existential Crisis of a Merciless Siren Murder Mermaids Make Mistakes Some of the mermaids wanted to kill him, but their orders said to bring him alive. It wasn’t supposed to matter that they didn’t know what he had done— I kind of might like to know. Some of us are curious. It helps me

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