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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Indigenous Writers Deserve More Credit for Being Hilarious

Tiffany Midge is the author of several books including the recent memoir Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s, a collection of prose that blends humor with social commentary and meditations on love and loss. Her poetry collection The Woman Who Married a Bear won Kenyon Review’s Earthworks Prize... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Ralph Ellison’s Letters Reveal a Complex Philosopher of Black Expression

“The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison” capture the fiercely intelligent and irreverent author of “Invisible Man” in conversation with other novelists and critics of his day. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-19 10:00:10 UTC ]
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Ali Wong’s Memoir Isn’t Just About Asian Americans—It’s Written To and For Us

When I read the reviews of Ali Wong’s memoir Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice For Living Your Best Life, I was at first thrilled—the responses were glowing—and then perplexed. I fundamentally agreed with what they said: that the book is a more intimate and poignant (yet... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-16 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Lilly Dancyger Wants You to Embrace Your Bad First Draft

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 time we’re talking to Lilly Dancyger, editor at Narratively and author of the forthcoming memoir Negative Space. Lilly’s next... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-12 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Electric Lit’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2019

Is your attention span ravaged by living in our hellscape of a modern era? Good news: 2019 brought us plenty of brilliant short fiction. We polled current and former Electric Lit staff and contributors about their favorite collections of the year, and their picks include debuts, National Book... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The Lost Books of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas review – how Austen's reputation has been warped

A deliciously original study of the cheap editions of Pride and Prejudice and other novels – ignored by literary scholars – casts new light on her readershipJane Austen aficionados think that they know the story of their favourite author’s posthumous dis-appearance and then re-emergence. For... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-12-11 07:30:31 UTC ]
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‘The Ferrante Effect’: In Italy, Women Writers Are Ascendant

“My Brilliant Friend” and Elena Ferrante’s other best-selling books are inspiring female novelists and shaking up the country’s male-dominated literary establishment. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-09 10:00:14 UTC ]
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Help an Independent Literary Magazine Thrive in a Hostile Climate

Every day of the year, Electric Literature is grateful for the people who read and share what we publish. But on this Giving Tuesday, we’re coming to you with a special request: Electric Lit is aiming for 1,000 members by 2020, and we want you to be one of them. Your membership gets you... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-03 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Why Three Generations of Americans All Have Same Favorite Cookbook

It was a rainy, snuggly night in November 2018, perfect for making mushroom barley soup or stuffed cabbage. I was walking home from the train when I saw it, inexplicably abandoned at the Little Free Library on my block. There, lying on its side as if after a long day of work, was that... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-27 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Why All Americans Should Read “Celestial Bodies”

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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You Should Be Getting Your Biographies in Children’s Picture Book Form

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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A Restless Housewife, a Closeted Vagabond, and Lady Luck

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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7 Standup Comedy Memoirs That Will Make You Laugh And Cry

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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Who Will Win the National Book Award for Fiction, According to My Dad

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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On Dennis Cooper’s Elegant Jump to Film

It’s rare for novelists to make the leap to becoming filmmakers, but Dennis Cooper has not only made the transition, his latest movie Permanent Green Light is one of the year’s best. It reworks his longtime themes of young people, intimacy, and violence to create an affecting story of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-18 09:47:50 UTC ]
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Carmen Maria Machado’s Memoir Is Riddled with Restless Ghosts

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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Go Beyond Sally Rooney With These 13 Irish Women Novelists

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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The Memoir of a Political Prisoner Who Never Stopped Imagining a Better World

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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Carmen Maria Machado Has Invented a New Genre: the Gothic Memoir

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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Are You a New York Writer or an LA Writer?

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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