Literature

Flash fiction is a form that often skirts the line between narrative poetry and short fiction, offering a depth of narrative and poetic expression. When I think about books that have had the most palpable impact on me, I realize that many of them use innovative forms. And many of the most memorable flash fiction

The Bedtime Story That Keeps Him Awake Brian Evenson Share article Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson I. “There is a saying,” his mother had told him several times, just before sleep, when he was still quite young, “always three graves.” She had taken the saying from a book, he discovered years later in

Ledia Xhoga’s debut novel Misinterpretation opens with the unnamed narrator, a translator from Albania, accepting an assignment to interpret for a Kosovar torture survivor named Alfred. Elements of Alfred’s story map onto her own family’s experience, and the narrator becomes all-consumed by his case. As personal and professional boundaries start to blur, the narrator is

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, which will be published by Random House on April 08, 2025. You can pre-order your copy here. Cross the jet bridge with Linda, a frequent flyer with a dangerous obsession, in this hilarious and provocative debut novel by the acclaimed author of Out

The lights go out. And in the darkness two friends banter—until one sees something. A portal into another realm? The friends are frozen and a figure appears announcing they tell stories here. It doesn’t matter if the friends want no part of this, the monsters’ greed is bottomless. That’s the prelude to Gianni Washington’s debut

Who are the women who shaped the middle ages? Can you remember? Were you ever even told about them? So many of their names are barely remembered today. Often their histories are ignored, their stories silenced or simply lost to time. Why? Maybe it’s because they were seen as dangerous. Often they were not the

We’re celebrating our 15th birthday, which makes us about as old as Poe would have been in literary magazine years. In honor of this glorious milestone, we’re throwing a party! Join our esteemed hosts, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Vanessa Chan, Deesha Philyaw, and Clare Sestanovich, as well as EL editors and authors, for an evening of

“We all belong to the sea between us,” wrote the Cuban American poet Richard Blanco. Our global ocean, the least accessible yet most critical set of ecosystems on Earth, has seemingly always been a source of spiritual and creative inspiration. The sea is the setting of dreams, of trauma, peace, beauty, curiosity, cleansing, aspirations, new life,

A Study of Labor and Fire: On Being a Queer Educator in the Second Lavender Scare by J. Bonanni I It is December 2022 and I am reading A Raisin in the Sun with my four classes of 8th grade students at a middle school on Cape Cod. Desks are arranged in a circle so

We all have one—that memory of something done or said with the absolute confidence of youth that makes our toes curl to recall. We think about it years later, in bed at night or on long drives or errantly in the shower and wish, cheeks somehow still flaming, that there was some way to take

Hope Is a Wrecking Ball Ode to a Machine The jukebox or the bevel grinder. A wheelbarrow.Things that do their jobs when pressed.A dishwasher, of course, is a comfort.Not like a weedwhacker, or a tire iron,the way a wheel chock can keep a secret.This morning as I razed the onion grass,I remembered how my father

Except for a brief period, a few years ago. My wheels had finally found the ruts of a writer’s path: I had a viral essay and New York Times bylines. I had kneeled before Poets & Writers with a writing book and been tapped by their sword on my shoulder, included on their Best Books

Nature as tangled forest, as oil-drenched bayou or salt desert. Nature as flux and change. In all the books discussed here, the writers use ideas of nature as backdrops for perplexing and life-changing character dilemmas. The ideas of nature are different in every case, and the protagonists are all searching for something they don’t quite

Growing up in the countryside is not a romantic idea to me: it was simply where we lived. But the sense of being connected to a particular place, to feel that I have a home village, a place where my ancestors are buried and where I go to remember them, is probably no longer a

The Unavoidable Intimacy of Interpretation Ledia Xhoga Share article Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga I was fifteen minutes late and his phone number was out of service. Even in late January, Washington Square Park pulsed with the energy of summer. The chess players were fretting over their moves to the sound of Gershwin. The saxophonist’s Great

Esmeralda Santiago’s book When I Was Puerto Rican debuted 30 years ago. This memoir introduced us to Negi (Santiago), a pre-teen with a captivating voice who chronicles her life in rural Puerto Rico in the 1950s. In Santiago’s own words, the memoir captures a world that no longer exists in Puerto Rico. We watch Negi

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die, the debut memoir by Arianna Rebolini, which will be published by Harper on April 29, 2025. You can pre-order your copy here. After a decade of therapy and a stint in a psychiatric ward to treat suicidal depression, Arianna

In her memoir, Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Home, Jessica E. Johnson writes “a story that has room for men who get things done” and “women who make-do and ask for little.” It’s a story about growing up in various mining camps, interwoven with her transition to parenthood in post-recession Portland, Oregon. But at its