7 Books Structured as Conversations

I love it when a text centers the dynamics of conversation. In my own life, talking to others gets me out of my head, and introduces me to possibilities I would never have dreamed of alone. I think of a quote by the activist Valerie Kaur, which my local bookshop has printed on some of […] The post 7 Books Structured as Conversations appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2024-06-12 11:00:00 UTC ]

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Too Busy for a Novel? Read These Short Stories Instead

One of the central questions I had when shaping my story collection, Proof of Me, was how to invite into it a unified feel, how to place each story to be in conversation—geographically, thematically, linearly—with what follows. I also sought for each story to stand on its own, offering a... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-08-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Who Do Powerful Men Become When They Sit Down at Home?

Taymour Soomro’s debut novel Other Names for Love begins with a son flinching at the sound of his father’s voice. Sixteen-year-old Fahad has been ordered to spend the summer with Rafik, his authoritarian father who manages their family farm in Sindh, Pakistan. It’s on the train ride there that... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-08-02 11:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Books That Epitomize Bookseller Noir

Noir has long been obsessed with books—books as objects, as evidence, as repositories of the past, and occasionally as glimpses into other worlds of possibility. It’s no wonder, then, that booksellers often turn up in fiction, and especially in mystery. There’s something intoxicating about the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-29 11:00:00 UTC ]
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White Capitalism is Destroying My Neighborhood

Gentrification takes center stage in Cleyvis Natera’s debut novel Neruda on the Park, which follows the different reactions the members of the Guerrero family have to the impending redevelopment of their predominantly Dominican New York City neighborhood.When a neighboring tenement is demolished... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-28 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Queer Memoir About Sex Work That Interrogates Power, Gender, and Heteronormativity

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... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Looking Back, Was I The Idiot?

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 […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-19 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Electric Literature Wins The Whiting Literary Magazine Prize

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... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-14 13:15:00 UTC ]
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Subverting Traditional Narratives of Love and Happiness

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... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-14 11:00:00 UTC ]
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2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize Winners Announced

The winners of the fifth annual Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes have been announced, with five publications, including 'Electric Literature' and 'Zyzzyva,' taking home a combined total of $144,000 in funding. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-07-14 04:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Historical Fiction Novels Set in the Pacific Northwest

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 post 7... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Stories About Growing Up on the Reservation

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. ... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-06 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Definitive Power Ranking of the Sexiest Book Covers

Designing a book cover is challenging, even more so when the work contains a raunchy subject matter. How do you convey, in a single glance, that the book is sensual, even sexy, without falling for pornographic tropes?  My debut novel, Little Rabbit, is about a sub/dom relationship between a... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-06-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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10 Books About Young Women in (and Out) of Love

The best literary fiction is in some ways a simple character study. It is a roadmap into the interiority of a specific character: the way they think, how their identity impacts their relationships, and what decisions get made in response to the socio-political pressures shaping their lives. But... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-06-24 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Liberation is having a space to call your own. L.A.'s Reparations Club proves it

For founder and owner Jazzi McGilbert, the concept bookshop and creative space is a physical offering for Black people in L.A. to be themselves. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-06-17 19:58:19 UTC ]
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Book Riot’s Deals of the Day for June 2, 2022

Today's edition of Daily Deals is sponsored by The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery.`The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan... Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2022-06-02 15:17:24 UTC ]
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Barry Lopez’s Darkness and Light

Some days after Barry’s death on December 25, 2020, I pulled every book of his I owned from the shelves around my apartment and stacked them on a corner of my desk. Then I walked down the hill to the used bookshop in the small Oregon town where I live and found several books of […] Continue reading at The Paris Review

[ The Paris Review | 2022-05-31 16:36:03 UTC ]
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An Anthology That Gives Voice to the Realities of Reproductive Freedom and Abortion

Shelly Oria’s new collection, I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom, is the latest in a string of new anthologies that reclaim and challenge the conversation surrounding reproduction. The collection deals with the choice of whether or not to have children, and also explores... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-26 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Portrait of an Angry Young Woman Set in Contemporary India

Naheed Phiroze Patel’s debut novel Mirror Made of Rain follows Noomi Wadia, an indignant young woman raised in a Parsi family in India, through a world that is keen to control women and safeguard long-established pecking orders. Since her childhood, Noomi has had a difficult relationship with... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-19 11:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s Time to Destigmatize Talking Openly About What’s Going On Down There

When I started reading Chloe Caldwell’s new book, The Red Zone, a memoir about identity, love, health, and pain, all told through the lens of her relationship to her period, I didn’t think I had period hang-ups of my own to work through. I do have pudendal neuralgia, a nerve pain condition that... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-12 11:05:00 UTC ]
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11 Books by Filipino American Authors You Should Be Reading

The first time I read a book about a person who even minorly resembled me, I was 19 and teaching at a creative writing summer camp. My coworker Sophie Lee’s YA novel What Things Mean tells the story of a young Filipina girl named Olive who uses reading to cope with feelings of loneliness and... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-06 11:00:00 UTC ]
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