Writers of literary fiction are supposed to disdain celebrity memoirs. They’re sucking up all the big advances and lowering the bar of what’s supposed to be Literature, right? But I’ve got a dirty reading secret. I love celebrity memoirs, particularly by standup comedians (and not just because I was doing research for No Good Very […] The post 7 Standup Comedy Memoirs That Will Make You Laugh And Cry appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-20 12:00:00 UTC ]
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi won the Man Booker International Prize this year for its beautifully rendered portrayal of a family’s tangled history in the village of al-Awafi in Oman. The novel was the first book translated from Arabic to win the prize, and more surprisingly, it was the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-26 11:59:00 UTC ]
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November is Picture Book Month, so these illustrated little gems are deservedly in the spotlight. In a recent blog post for Books Are Magic, novelist and bookstore owner Emma Straub curated a list of picture books. Among Straub’s picks for the best picture books of 2019 is a wonderful biography... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-25 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The new Elena Ferrante is just one of the exciting novels in translation coming next year. Lara Feigel talks to the UK editors who are rediscovering classics and finding new audiencesThere are voices that speak to us across oceans and centuries with more intimacy than the people who surround us... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-11-23 08:00:49 UTC ]
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From the title, you might think that On Swift Horses is about cowboys, horse wrangling, rural landscapes—and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Shannon Pufahl’s debut novel explores wide-open spaces and how people navigate them in a post-Depression, post-World War II, Baby Boomer era in Southern... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-21 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Writers of literary fiction are supposed to disdain celebrity memoirs. They’re sucking up all the big advances and lowering the bar of what’s supposed to be Literature, right? But I’ve got a dirty reading secret. I love celebrity memoirs, particularly by standup comedians (and not just because... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-20 12:00:00 UTC ]
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These are some important things to know about my dad: every Halloween he dresses up in a different inflatable costume to hand out candy, he’s seen Bigfoot, he watches John Wick about once a month, he wanted to name me Elvis, and when I was younger he read all my favorite books along with me.... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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I first encountered Carmen Maria Machado in 2016, reading her short fiction “Horror Story” in Granta. Her innovative and acclaimed debut collection Her Body and Other Parties had not yet been published, but I scourged the internet for everything I could find. What I found were stories about... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s a confusing thing, being Irish. We’re European with none of the sophistication, and for a tiny island, we have an impressive lack of consistency. That said, we also have an impressive literary output. Our politics, social movements, and religions have born enough conflict to make a canon... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Virtually none of us will ever know what Ahmet Altan has gone through, and continues to live through. After the 2016 Turkish coup d’etat attempt, the writer was arrested along with his brother on such claims as “sending subliminal messages to coup supporters.” In 2018, they were sentenced to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-11 12:00:01 UTC ]
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ALMOST NO CONTEMPORARY literary fiction recounts the experience of getting an abortion. Perhaps this is because it can seem politically suspect to write in a nuanced way about its difficulties; opponents of legal abortion are all too eager to turn any mention of these difficulties into evidence... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-07 13:30:09 UTC ]
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In the middle of Carmen Maria Machado’s new memoir In the Dream House, CARMEN, stylized in all caps like a play script, sits across from the woman with whom she’s been in an abusive relationship (THE WOMAN IN THE DREAM HOUSE). The scene is set (“the curtain rises”) and we’re shown, “the house... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-05 12:00:26 UTC ]
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You go to a coffee shop in order to focus on your craft. What do you order? A. A black coffee. B. An almond milk matcha. What is your critically acclaimed debut novel about? A. A man getting stuck on a subway train and revisiting the weight of all of the mistakes he’s made in […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-01 11:00:37 UTC ]
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While you're perusing the literary fiction shelves, create a haunting atmosphere with these eerie literary fiction titles for Halloween and beyond. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-10-31 10:40:16 UTC ]
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Few are able to plunge the depths of familial complexity like Jami Attenberg, and even fewer are able to reflect the nesting doll of desires, secrets, and contradictions the individual becomes when put into the context of family. In her seventh novel, All This Could Be Yours, the New York Times... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-23 11:00:35 UTC ]
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Gabby Rivera’s YA novel follows Juliet Palante, a Puerto Rican teen from the Bronx, who is reckoning with her feminism and queerness. After coming out to her family, she goes to Portland to be a summer intern for her favorite feminist author, Harlowe Brisbane. Juliet believes this will be the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-21 11:00:58 UTC ]
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While literary fiction often sidesteps the climate crisis, eco-horror is filling the breach. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-19 09:00:04 UTC ]
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The Blunt Instrument is an advice column for writers, written by Elisa Gabbert (specializing in nonfiction), John Cotter (specializing in fiction), and Ruoxi Chen (specializing in publishing). If you need tough advice for a writing problem, send your question to [email protected].... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-18 11:00:04 UTC ]
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SEQUELS IN LITERARY FICTION are rare. There’s a risk in returning to characters whose arcs have been resolved or purposely left in ambiguity. A second book may rob readers of the pleasure of imagination, thus undoing some of the magic of the original novel. But sometimes a character so compels... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-16 17:00:57 UTC ]
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When I think of literary authors, I often imagine my college reading list — and my lecturer’s pontifications on how their books have been meticulously etched into the canon of cultural significance. I rarely think about storytime with Mom and Dad. So would you believe it if I told you that Nobel... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-11 11:00:05 UTC ]
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The Older Brother in Mahir Guven’s debut novel drives for a ride-sharing service in Paris while his Syrian-born father is an old-school taxi driver. Their Uber politics conflict is further sullied by their religious divergence. Into this, Guven adds a Younger Brother, a talented nurse who could... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-08 11:00:58 UTC ]
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