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 ]
“The world here beats faster than a hummingbird’s wings,” writes Alexandra Chang in her new collection Tomb Sweeping. Chang, the author of Days of Distraction and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 recipient, writes poignantly about tenuous connection. In these stories, a wealthy housewife... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-11-02 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Darrin Bell didn’t set out to write his much anticipated graphic memoir, The Talk. He’d initially sold another project delving into the lives of three generations of men in his family, all descendants of an enslaved man named Addison Bell, in a two book deal to Henry Holt and Co. But as he was... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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In Myriam Gurba’s latest essay collection Creep, the Mexican American author interrogates both those who deceive, exploit, and oppress others as well as the culture that enables them. “People who hurt other people can be charming,” Gurba notes in the title essay. “It works in their favor.” In... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-26 11:00:00 UTC ]
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On March 11, 2022, Molly McGhee shared a resignation letter on Twitter. She was quitting her job as an assistant editor at Tor, despite the fact that her first acquisition, The Atlas Six, had debuted at number three on the New York Times Bestseller List. She cited “systemwide prejudice against... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-20 11:03:00 UTC ]
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When you hear the phrase “queer history,” how far back does your mind go? For many, there’s a sense that LGBTQIA+ history is fairly recent, starting with Marsha P. Johnson or maybe Oscar Wilde. Beyond that, we start to get into murky territory: stories of “lifelong bachelors” and “happy... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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It would make sense that any history would begin at Stillwater Prison, where so much of the story and mythology of prison in Minnesota also begins. It is where Cole Younger of the famous James-Younger gang did their time, and where they spent their own money to start the Prison Mirror, the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-16 11:00:00 UTC ]
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When I first encountered the work of Henry Dumas, I was very nearly finished with my undergraduate degree in English. I favored American literature in my time studying, and was lucky to have access to syllabi that spanned a more diverse array of writers. The Black writers I would come to know... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-13 11:15:00 UTC ]
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When I first encountered the work of Henry Dumas, I was very nearly finished with my undergraduate degree in English. I favored American literature in my time studying, and was lucky to have access to syllabi that spanned a more diverse array of writers. The Black writers I would come to know... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-13 11:15:00 UTC ]
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Athena Dixon’s The Loneliness Files: A Memoir in Essays opens on New Year’s Eve of 2021, with Dixon alone in her apartment in Philadelphia, thinking about death during a year fraught with pandemic fear. The first pieces explore her fascination with women who died on their own and, because they... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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My introduction to romance novels came when my high school crush handed me a book written by his mother’s friend under a pen name. It was all very hush hush, no one knew what the author’s real identity was, but he trusted me with this big secret (which might have been the first grand romantic... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-12 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Encompassing a wide range of genres from historical fiction to fantasy to poetry to investigative journalism to memoir, this exciting abundance of books published in 2023 by emerging and acclaimed Native writers speak to the rich diversity of the Indigenous experience. From meditations on the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-09 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Safiya Sinclair writes in her memoir How to Say Babylon, “The perfect daughter was nothing but a vessel for the man’s seed, unblemished clay waiting for Jah’s fingerprint.” The memoir, Sinclair’s first, is about her journey to shaping a future that isn’t limited by the idea of the perfect... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Writing about pop culture and current technology is always a gamble, pitting critique of the present against longevity, a story that will still feel relevant after we’re gone. But for novelists (present company included) who were exposed to the Real World before the, um, real world, reality TV... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-27 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Writing literary fiction is a freeing thing—there are no rules, there is just a story waiting to be told. When I started writing my first novel, The Theory of Flight, I knew that I wanted it be a character-driven story that explored difficult social and political terrain in order to reveal... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-09-27 08:45:38 UTC ]
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As we move into the fall reading season, deeply imagined short stories and inventive linked essays are having a moment alongside novels. What’s thrilling about the books coming out from small presses is the breadth of range—there are intentional and accidental murders, family drama and... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-26 11:15:00 UTC ]
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Queer people have been writing historical fiction since before queerness existed—by which I mean, since before it was hammered into an antithesis to heterosexuality during the long nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth, queers looking to write about the past had to grapple with new,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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In Alissa Hattman’s debut novel Sift, the world, at first, appears hostile to life, nearly uninhabitable. Skies darken with toxins and smoke. Food, especially produce, is scarce. Drinking water is limited, a result of rivers and other natural bodies that have been poisoned. Fires rage and a... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Aurora Mattia’s debut novel The Fifth Wound is a fantastical journey through the formulation of one trans woman’s truth. Mattia’s own recapitulation as protagonist Aurora aka @silicone_angel bridges the gap between ancient Greece, Covid-era Brooklyn, and the rolling fields of Iowa searching to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-01 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Jane Wong’s memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a feast of a book. It’s about hunger—the hungers of the body, of addiction, of history. Brilliant, gutting, and funny, she writes with such range about growing up in her family’s Chinese restaurant in Atlantic City as their reach for the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-31 11:00:00 UTC ]
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John West’s Lessons and Carols is a lyric memoir of recovery, parenting, loss, and hope, which is also periodically quite funny (ex. the first line of the first Lesson, “Caring for this baby has taught me new ways to resent.”) Hopscotching through time, the memoir shows us West’s first, early... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-18 11:00:00 UTC ]
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