Electric Lit’s Favorite Novels of 2021

When it comes to great novels, this year felt like an embarrassment of riches. The books collected here are ambitious—in intellect, in scope, in subject matter, and in size. Some are perfect encapsulations of the unique problems of our time, while others illuminate the human threads that connect us through time and space. Novelists often […] The post Electric Lit’s Favorite Novels of 2021 appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2021-12-16 12:05:00 UTC ]

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A Queer Memoir About Sex Work That Interrogates Power, Gender, and Heteronormativity

Chris Belcher’s searing memoir about her work as a professional dominatrix isn’t exactly a comfortable read. Not because of the subject, but because Pretty Baby asks more of the reader than many memoirs. Like the best art does, this book invites introspection and interrogation of both our own... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Looking Back, Was I The Idiot?

Before we begin, I must confess to my bias. I am not an objective reader, so in some ways I have already failed. A few months before I read Elif Batuman’s debut novel The Idiot, I had a conversation with a friend that unlocked a safe in my brain. After, there was nowhere I could […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-19 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Electric Literature Wins The Whiting Literary Magazine Prize

We are thrilled to announce that Electric Literature has won the prestigious Whiting Literary Magazine Prize! This highly competitive award recognizes excellence in digital and print magazines, and supports winners with an outright grant in the first year, followed by two years of a matching... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-14 13:15:00 UTC ]
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Subverting Traditional Narratives of Love and Happiness

When CJ Hauser published “The Crane Wife” in The Paris Review, an essay about repressing her needs in a relationship, calling off a wedding, and going to study whooping cranes on the Gulf Coast, it quickly became a viral hit. Three years later, her 17-piece memoir in essays of the same name... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-14 11:00:00 UTC ]
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2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize Winners Announced

The winners of the fifth annual Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes have been announced, with five publications, including 'Electric Literature' and 'Zyzzyva,' taking home a combined total of $144,000 in funding. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-07-14 04:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Historical Fiction Novels Set in the Pacific Northwest

The Northwest, where I live and where my novel is set, is a big place and it is a lot of things. It is the damp, mossy woods of the coast, the high desert, and the snowy, jagged mountain ranges that divide the two. It is home to weird and real creatures like giant octopuses, […] The post 7... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Stories About Growing Up on the Reservation

Morgan Talty’s The Night of the Living Rez is a searching and honest collection of short stories following a young Penobscot character named David and his coming of age on the rez, where community, family, and tradition are as fraught with colonial entanglement as they are forces for healing. ... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-06 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Bilingual poetry book about A470 sets Welsh hearts racing

Welsh-English anthology about Welsh equivalent of Route 66 republished twice since release on St David’s DayIt is variously described as a snake, a zip, a ribbon, a scar, a Welsh version of Route 66. Memories, myths and moments of love and grief are woven into a collection of poems celebrating... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2022-07-03 14:00:16 UTC ]
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A Definitive Power Ranking of the Sexiest Book Covers

Designing a book cover is challenging, even more so when the work contains a raunchy subject matter. How do you convey, in a single glance, that the book is sensual, even sexy, without falling for pornographic tropes?  My debut novel, Little Rabbit, is about a sub/dom relationship between a... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-06-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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10 Books About Young Women in (and Out) of Love

The best literary fiction is in some ways a simple character study. It is a roadmap into the interiority of a specific character: the way they think, how their identity impacts their relationships, and what decisions get made in response to the socio-political pressures shaping their lives. But... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-06-24 11:00:00 UTC ]
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An Anthology That Gives Voice to the Realities of Reproductive Freedom and Abortion

Shelly Oria’s new collection, I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom, is the latest in a string of new anthologies that reclaim and challenge the conversation surrounding reproduction. The collection deals with the choice of whether or not to have children, and also explores... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-26 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Portrait of an Angry Young Woman Set in Contemporary India

Naheed Phiroze Patel’s debut novel Mirror Made of Rain follows Noomi Wadia, an indignant young woman raised in a Parsi family in India, through a world that is keen to control women and safeguard long-established pecking orders. Since her childhood, Noomi has had a difficult relationship with... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-19 11:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s Time to Destigmatize Talking Openly About What’s Going On Down There

When I started reading Chloe Caldwell’s new book, The Red Zone, a memoir about identity, love, health, and pain, all told through the lens of her relationship to her period, I didn’t think I had period hang-ups of my own to work through. I do have pudendal neuralgia, a nerve pain condition that... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-12 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Lit Hub Weekly: May 2-6, 2022

Lost in the subject matter: Gerald Murnane rereads his first novel, Tamarisk Road, nearly 50 years later. | Lit Hub Why Twitter loves James Baldwin (and whether that’s a good thing). | Lit Hub A quiet reply to a life cut short: Elisha Cooper on coming to terms with what killed his brother. | Lit... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2022-05-07 10:30:22 UTC ]
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11 Books by Filipino American Authors You Should Be Reading

The first time I read a book about a person who even minorly resembled me, I was 19 and teaching at a creative writing summer camp. My coworker Sophie Lee’s YA novel What Things Mean tells the story of a young Filipina girl named Olive who uses reading to cope with feelings of loneliness and... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-06 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Young Woman’s Formative Queer Affair With a Married Lover

Many of us know Michelle Hart from her wonderful work highlighting queer writers when she was the assistant books editor at O, the Oprah Magazine. Now, she has her own novel to add to the fold: We Do What We Do In The Dark, an exquisitely written, intimately affecting novel about Mallory, a... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-05-03 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Historical Novelists and Fantasy Writers Should Be Friends

Author Christopher M. Cevasco says there's a surprising lack of crossover between the two. Continue reading at Wired

[ Wired | 2022-04-29 16:00:00 UTC ]
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8  Literary Friendships Told Through Letters

In 1995, I left the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle to teach English in Vietnam. Around that time, my friend and fellow bookseller Janet Brown traveled to Thailand to teach as well. There was no email then, and overseas phone calls were a luxury. So we wrote to one another, meditating on the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-04-28 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Jason Schwartzman Believes Everyone Has a Piece of Flash Nonfiction In Them

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?”, we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This month, we’re featuring Jason Schwartzman, an essayist, and fiction writer, and author of the memoir No One You Know: Strangers... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-04-27 11:00:00 UTC ]
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The people who teach us history aren’t always historians

Filmmakers, novelists and photographers, among others, also shape our collective memory, Richard Cohen writes. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2022-04-22 12:00:50 UTC ]
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