Lit Lists Earlier this spring, the editors of WLT invited twenty-one writers to nominate a single book, published since the year 2000, that has had a major influence on their own work, along with a brief statement explaining their choice. We published the longlist and then invited readers to vote on their favorites. Here are the top vote recipients, followed by the respective nominating statements: 1. M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! 2. Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know: On Writing 3. John FitzGerald, The Mind 4. Roberto Bolaño, 2666 5. (tie) Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, and W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz To mark the occasion of Zong! winning the readers’ poll, M. NourbeSe Philip and Philip Metres recently took part in an email interview about the book. It will be published tomorrow on the WLT Weekly. M. NourbeSe Philip Zong! Wesleyan University Press, 2008 I discovered M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! only after I’d written abu ghraib arias, when critics saw parallels in the work. Zong! is at once a brilliant documentary long poem and a sort of ritual exorcism of the demons of the slave trade. Built out of the language of the legal document of Gregson v. Gilbert, Zong! brings to light the murder of Africans on board a slave ship in 1781 for financial gain. The kidnapped and enslaved Africans had been purposely thrown overboard so that the owner of the Zong could benefit from his insurance policy. Philip’s visionary use of the burying language... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-06-28 13:32:05 UTC ]
Sisters confront racism with humor, a fantasy novelist delves into short stories, a military history expert salutes the civil rights movement, and a movie star's memoir goes behind the scenes. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-05-25 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Providence Journal editor John Revelstoke Rathom also had a fake biography, writes journalist Mark Arsenault. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-05-20 12:00:53 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a prolific novelist, short-story writer, and poet, who is perhaps best-known for classic children’s books like The Jungle Book and for poems like ‘If—’. But Kipling’s short stories for adults often get overlooked – a fact which is perhaps hardly surprising given... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-05-18 14:00:38 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Sometimes in interviews I catch myself speaking of my book of short stories about the Iraq War as though it is a kind of literary journalism. I want people to think about their recent history, imagine the lives of soldiers, and get a sense of what it’s like to go to war. And I do […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-05-17 08:53:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Colin Barrett's second collection, 'Homesickness,' expands the reach of this mordantly funny Irishman beyond the small-town millennials of his debut. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-05-03 13:00:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Very short stories–also known as flash fiction, micro fiction, drabbles, and the like–are a delightful form of fiction. Start with these. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-19 10:34:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Literature is full of monsters whose names and appearance have passed into general circulation: we all recognise Frankenstein (even if, as pedants will be quick to point out, Hollywood has made us confuse the ‘monster’ with his creator), Dracula, and the Minotaur, among many others. But what are... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-13 14:00:46 UTC ]
More news stories like this
If you're in search of more of the best short stories of all time, start with this list to build your to-read list! Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-05 10:32:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
One of her country’s first writers to address female sexuality from a woman’s perspective, she produced four novels and dozens of short stories that could be read as political allegories. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-04 22:13:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The 1918 short story ‘Bliss’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Although Mansfield never wrote a novel, her short stories helped to redefine the possibilities of the story form. ‘Bliss’ is a story full of ambiguous and... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-02 14:00:03 UTC ]
More news stories like this
What are some of the best short stories by female writers? Women have been making their mark on the short story form since the form became popular in the nineteenth century, and many notable female practitioners of the short story, such as Katherine Mansfield and Kate Chopin, were among the […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-23 15:00:17 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The inventive and philosophical short stories of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) take in a range of themes. Like many other authors, Borges had a set of preoccupations which he revisited time and again in his fiction, and a number of his stories are variations on the same […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-22 15:00:53 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Are you tired of getting your short stories rejected by literary magazines with weird names like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and, lol, The New Yorker? Do you, a writer of a searing, minimalist narratives of longing and loss amid the ruins of late capitalism, need to eat? Sure you do! Well,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 16:16:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this
As women writers adapted to a changing post-WWII job market, so too did they adapt in their work, translating their skills into writing suspense for television and turning short stories into screenplays. In her essay on adaptation and “gendered discourses,” Shelley Cobb writes that “feminist... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-28 09:50:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Book Reviews 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... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-23 21:05:41 UTC ]
More news stories like this
As a literary genre, fantasy is one of the oldest and most recent. Although modern fantasy only began to be recognised as a distinct genre in the late twentieth century, thanks largely to the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien and his imitators, its roots can be traced back millennia. […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-02-23 15:00:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Although he is probably better known as a poet, Langston Hughes (1902-67), a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, also wrote some of the finest short stories of the early twentieth century, and ‘Red-Headed Baby’ is one of his best. ‘Red-Headed Baby’ was published in Hughes’ 1934 collection... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-02-22 15:00:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Interviews The creative writing of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having sanctioned the passage of text from paper to digital support. But is it really true that the author’s cards have disappeared? And how do contemporary authors write... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-08 20:43:39 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Feeding the planet's 8 billion people is challenge enough and our current industrialized commercial practices are causing such ecological damage that we may soon find ourselves hard-pressed to feed any more. For decades, scientists have sought out higher yields and faster growth at the expense... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-02-05 16:30:43 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Book Reviews Antoine-François-Jean Claudet, [Multiple Exposures of the Moon] (1846–52), daguerreotype, 2019.47, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel / Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Queer... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-01 20:37:36 UTC ]
More news stories like this