Can We Truly Be Free of Our Past? A Conversation with Wendy Chen, by Xixuan Collins Interviews [email protected] Mon, 04/29/2024 - 15:10 An epic family saga that spans over one hundred years and two countries, Wendy Chen’s powerful, lyrical debut, Their Divine Fires (Algonquin, forthcoming on May 7, 2024), is about history, love, passion, loyalty, betrayal, and our desire to be free of our past. In the novel, four generations of women survived the formidable hardship in China during the tumultuous twentieth century—the warlord melee, the Communist–Nationalist civil war, the Japanese invasion, and the Cultural Revolution—each emerging with unspeakable loss and heartache yet undampened spirit for life and the future. An intimate study of family relationships with the backdrop of a chaotic, changing world, this book provides a perspective on Chinese history rarely seen in American literature. Xixuan Collins: You capture the emotions of the four generations of Chinese and Chinese American women so vividly. You have said that you were inspired by your grandmother’s stories of her mother and uncles and the ways they fought, lived, and died for what they believed in. Can you tell us a little more about the story behind your story; that is, what was the moment when you realized you had a story to tell and you felt compelled to sit down and write this novel? Wendy Chen: My grandmother would always tell me stories of her family when I... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-04-29 20:10:46 UTC ]
The Nigerian writer, the first sub-Saharan winner of the Nobel Prize, discusses 'Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-09-23 13:00:36 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Simon & Schuster UK has acquired the 28th instalment in American author Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum bounty hunter series, alongside the first novel in a brand new series. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-22 17:14:06 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Flash fiction has never been hotter. A tectonic shift over the last 20 years in how narrative is conveyed—fueled largely by the online journal’s rise from (mostly) irrelevance to somewhere near the top of the literary fiction food chain—has created the perfect environment for disseminating... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Palmares” — her first novel since 1999’s “Mosquito” — is an emancipation story set in 17th-century Brazil. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-09-14 09:00:08 UTC ]
More news stories like this
With Harrow, her first novel in two decades, Joy Williams stares into the abyss. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2021-09-12 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Mantle has landed The Exhibitionist, Charlotte Mendelson's first novel since her 2013 Booker-longlisted work Almost English (Mantle). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-07 21:02:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
From the acclaimed author of novels and short stories, 'Harrow' is a magnificent, moving story about people picking up the pieces of apocalypse. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-09-07 13:00:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Atticus Lish was acclaimed for his first novel 'Preparation for the Next Life.' His second, 'The War for Gloria,' is more raw, painful and personal. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-09-02 13:00:39 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Imprint’s Green Ideas series begins with 20 short books by writers from Rachel Carson to Greta Thunberg it believes are ‘the classics that made a movement’From Greta Thunberg to James Lovelock, publisher Penguin Classics has come up with a “new canon” of the environmental literature, which it... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-26 07:00:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Book Reviews The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Photo by Steven Taylor / Flickr The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s first novel, is textually connected to the works of Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-08-18 20:12:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Fiona Sampson’s biography reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-08-17 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The country music superstar has teamed up with the novelist James Patterson to write Run, Rose, Run, which will be published in MarchFirst globally successful entertainer, then heroic sponsor of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine, and now novelist … Dolly Parton seems determined to prove that there... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-11 16:27:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Interviews Emilio Fraia’s Sevastopol, out this summer from New Directions, is the sort of book that beguiles and dazzles in equal measure. Consisting of three disparate stories—of a mountain climber attempting to scale Mt. Everest, a mysterious loner... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-08-09 20:31:30 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Independent publisher Influx Press is launching a new fiction prize for Black British women, in partnership with lifestyle platform Black Ballad. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-07-27 19:32:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this
I’ve never read the ending of a book first, though I do have a habit of flipping to the back before I begin, turning instead to the acknowledgments page. There are stories embedded here. Acknowledgments capture the real-life intimacies of the literary world and lay bare the backdrop of the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-07-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
"The notion of 'a book' is just a convenient fiction which we books go along with because it serves the needs of the bean counters in publishing, not to mention the ego of the writers. But the reality is far more complex.” So explains “the Book”, one of the narrators of Ruth Ozeki’s fourth novel... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-07-09 19:27:08 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, Soyinka is coming out with his first novel in almost 50 years, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. The post Fifty Years Later, a New Novel Emerges appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2021-06-24 09:59:45 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Pandemic Dispatches Photo by Daniel Tafjord / Unsplash Unrequited love I download a book. One of those books—for women. Certainly not porn, but you know. Never mind the shirtless guy gracing its cover (his lumpy, bumpy abs—oh my!), or the wanton... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-06-16 13:40:35 UTC ]
More news stories like this
'Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch,' historical fiction about Kepler's mother, is Galchen's first novel since 2008's 'Atmospheric Disturbances.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-06-03 14:00:33 UTC ]
More news stories like this
If you want to do some serious reading to reflect on humanity and its many aspects, these 5 contemporary literary fiction books are for you, including A Burning By Megha Majumdar. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-05-28 10:38:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this