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 ]
You can make your reading experience *even better* with these great book reading accessories. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-11-15 11:38:51 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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Her first novel first novel came out in 1778, when she was twenty-five, and made her famous. Continue reading at The Paris Review
[ The Paris Review | 2019-11-06 14:00:37 UTC ]
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August 29th. French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles is throwing its traditional end of summer party, also known as “le cocktail de rentrée littéraire.” On the intimate patio of the Musée Bourdelle, on the Left Bank, the big shots of France’s literary world exchange anecdotes about their... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-04 09:49:09 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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According to the Bookseller, Elena Ferrante’s first novel in five years will be published in English in June 2020 by Europa Editions. The Lying Life of Adults (great title? or greatest title?) is out in Italian this coming November 7, and the English version will, of course, appear in a... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-28 12:11:35 UTC ]
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Daunt Books Publishing has acquired debut novel The Coming Bad Days by poet and academic Sarah Bernstein. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-24 06:01:24 UTC ]
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In 2013, I moved to New York City alone. I had just divorced and graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop. My first novel had been released—waiting for it had been my only remaining tether to a former life. With its release, my last connection to the functional adult world was severed and I was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-23 08:48:27 UTC ]
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In her first novel to be published in the UK, Catherine Chung tells the story of a gifted mathematician whose studies take her deep into her family history. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 07:02:53 UTC ]
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The first novel I published with a major house was about a murder I covered as a reporter when I was in my early twenties. The victim, who was my age, and lived in my neighborhood, disappeared in the winter and her body was found in the summer in a shallow grave in the woods […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:49 UTC ]
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On this warm October day in Southern California, I walk the Venice canals and think of Kate Braverman. How in her sensational first novel Lithium for Medea she captured a Venice so distant that it’s difficult to accept that this version, which is polished and expensive and filled with tourists,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-22 08:48:36 UTC ]
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Jokha Alharthi’s inventive multigenerational tale, “Celestial Bodies,” is also the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-21 15:10:57 UTC ]
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LOOK, IT MUST be said: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments is a deeply strange text. A page-turning potboiler set 15 years after the events of the first novel and published over three decades later, and co-winner this week of the 2019 Booker Prize, it tells a story only barely connected to the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-19 15:00:57 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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A novel featuring a 110-year-old character has won the £20,000 Daily Mail and Penguin Random House First Novel Competition, now in its fourth year. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-18 05:17:36 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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Bloomsbury has acquired Irish children's laureate Sarah Crossan's first novel for adults in a six-figure deal at auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-16 04:39:48 UTC ]
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Debut author Chikọdili Emelumadu has won the £3,000 Curtis Brown First Novel Prize. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-10 07:07:47 UTC ]
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Translating one medium into another is tricky. Music is music and art is art and dance is dance; to try to convey the power of another art in fiction is its own sleight-of-hand. My own first novel takes on that challenge. In A Song For A New Day, musician Luce Cannon was on the cusp […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-07 11:00:15 UTC ]
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The founder and editor of literary magazine Strong Words on his appetite for tales of financial chicanery and why he won’t be returning to Jane AustenEd Needham is the editor of Strong Words, a magazine about books that he writes and edits on his own from his flat in Camden Town, a feat that has... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-10-05 17:00:51 UTC ]
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