7 Novels About Being Trapped on an Island

Reading a good book can feel like traveling to a remote island. A particular kind of journey where having crossed a stretch of water, and surrounded by sea, you are cut off from the rest of the world. For a writer, an island lends itself to creating atmosphere—claustrophobic, mystical, exposed. Or, as Agatha Christie understood, […] The post 7 Novels About Being Trapped on an Island appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2020-02-28 12:00:00 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "7 Novels About Being Trapped on an Island"


The Hardest Part of Writing My Memoir Was Telling My Family About It

You should watch Euphoria, a friend told me while we were on a walk during our young daughters’ dance class. I wasn’t sure why she would suggest this. Particularly in the context of our conversation: I was confiding in her about the anxiety that felt like it had been boiling inside of me for... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-13 12:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


If You Want to Build a Story, Become an Architect

Mary-Alice Daniel has been on a journey, literally, across continents. She documents her experiences in A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing, which is a memoir about places, from which she has been uprooted, assimilated into, revisited, and settled, giving the reader a close look into the lives... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-05 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


How a Good Book Became the ‘Richest’ of Holiday Gifts

As Christmas came to be celebrated in the home, choosing the right volume was a way to show intimate understanding of the person opening the package. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2022-12-02 15:52:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this


How to Tell If You Grew Up in a Cult

The first chapter of Daniella Mestyanek Young’s memoir Uncultured opens with a screech: It is 1993 and Mestyanek Young—then 5 years old—is inside a commune in Brazil, standing at the back of a line of children waiting to be paddled. As she explains, it’s a normal day in the Children of God, the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-25 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


An Indigenous Writer Discovers New and Old Ways to Connect With the Land and With Each Other

Joshua Whitehead can’t be held by genre. Following on the success of his Lambda Literary Award winning novel Jonny Appleseed and poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer, Making Love with the Land is Whitehead’s first full-length work of creative nonfiction. But to describe this book as merely... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-23 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


We Partied With Padma Lakshmi, Union Supporter, at the National Book Awards

The National Books Awards returned in full force on November 16, 2022 for a night of in-person glitz after two years of virtual ceremonies. In front of white tents where the literati gathered for photos on the red carpet, publishing workers with the HarperCollins Union, standing in the cold,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-18 12:06:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Leaving the Church to Find Spiritual Nourishment

The memoir Heretic opens with Jeanna Kadlec boarding a bus to the Middlesex County Courthouse in Massachusetts, where she is filing for divorce against her husband, an Evangelical Christian, and pastor’s son to boot. Kadlec is twenty-five and exhausted from the labor of suppressing her... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-17 12:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Desperate Writer Query Template*

Esteemed Agent, I’m seeking representation for my [300,000-word rhyming memoir / novel-in-grocery-coupons / famous literary graves calendar**] which is a cross between [Maid and Green Eggs and Ham / a bag of Halloween candy and that novel-in-texts you just sold / an apple watch and a mortuary... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-11 12:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


I’m Proud of My Queer Fandom

The first time I felt possessed by a fantasy series, I was fifteen. It was 2004, and from my family’s small computer room, I spent the after-dinner hours in a web forum devoted to NC-17 Harry Potter fanfiction. This was the same room where my brother had constructed a secret liquor cabinet from... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-01 11:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


How Do You Escape If Your Body Is the Prison?

Endometriosis is classified by Mayo Clinic as a “common” condition, “treatable by a medical professional.” And yet, when Emma Bolden began experiencing aggressive symptoms of the illness in elementary school, she was treated for decades by doctors who neither believed her account of her... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-27 11:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The Sex is Not Frivolous

I have long been fascinated by books about the early years of the AIDS crisis. Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir from 1988 remains a cherished work; last year’s Let the Record Show by Sarah Schulman and It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful by Jack Lowery provided crucial insights into... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-26 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The Eerie Experience of Watching My Science Fiction Story Become Real

On May 13, I finally got to read my wayward science fiction story “It Is the Voice That Unnerves Me” in The Dread Machine. I had been submitting the story since the spring of 2019, and had thought many times about consigning it to the “retired” list. I knew every word, sentence and section break... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-20 11:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


A Queer Black Anarchist’s Journey to Find Liberation in America and Abroad

Prince Shakur’s debut memoir When They Tell You to Be Good starts with an argument between him and his mother which recalls the image of his father’s murder, a man he never got to know. In unflinchingly honest detail Shakur traces his own journey of self actualization as a queer, Black Jamaican... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Isle McElroy Asks Torrey Peters “What Comes Next?”

It’s difficult to say anything that hasn’t already been said about Torrey Peters’s debut novel, Detransition, Baby. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a national bestseller, a NYT Notable Book, and named a Book of the Year by more publications than my word count limit will let me include. Not... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-09-26 11:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


7 Books Set in Pakistan

On her first day at an American high school, the protagonist of my novel, Hira, faces a dilemma. She considers herself well-read, but as she rifles through a thick textbook in her English Literature class, she realizes that none of the American authors in there are familiar to her. It is 2010,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-09-22 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


There’s No Place Like Grandma’s Abandoned Island

Meghan Gilliss’ debut novel Lungfish follows Tuck, her husband Paul, and their toddler Agnes as they all squat on Tuck’s dead grandmother’s island in the Gulf of Maine after running out of money. While Paul undergoes substance withdrawal in the rustic house, Tuck and Agnes survive on whatever... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-09-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


What Makes a Good Book Club Question?

What makes for a good book club question? Here are some tips to consider before your next book club meeting. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2022-09-09 10:37:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The Cutest Bookstore Pets in America

There are very few things in the world that we at Electric Lit love more than bookstores, but one of those things is pets. We are absolutely obsessed with our furry friends. It only stands to reason that to our minds, there is no greater place in the world than a bookstore with a pet. […] The... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-09-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Lust, Rivalry, and Ambition Culminate in a Betrayal at an Elite Art School 

Set on the idyllic New England campus of an elite art school called Wrynn, and situated against the backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Antonia Angress’ debut novel Sirens & Muses is an exemplary depiction of what can occur at the intersection of art and adolescence. This... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-09-01 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Who Committed the Murder in Apartment C4?

Tess Gunty’s debut novel The Rabbit Hutch follows the inhabitants of a low-income housing complex, called the Rabbit Hutch, in Vacca Vale, Indiana. It’s a loud novel, full of many voices, since there are many inhabitants of the Rabbit Hutch, some of whom we know by apartment number and some by... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-08-18 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this