Falling in Love Is Hard When You’re the Guardian of the Dead

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel When We Were Birds begins in the time before time and follows the uneasy truce between the living and the dead. Cigarettes are offered, liquor is poured, prayers are said, all in the hope that the buried stay buried. This is the story of Yejide, a young woman who becomes […] The post Falling in Love Is Hard When You’re the Guardian of the Dead appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2022-04-01 11:00:00 UTC ]

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10 Science Fiction Books by Black Women Writers

This past summer, an auntie of mine dusted off an old cardboard box of books from a cluttered storage unit, and handed me a slim blue and gold paperback with soft, slightly frayed corners and a creased spine by Octavia E. Butler. I had never read science fiction that featured a Black girl being... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-28 12:00:00 UTC ]
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You’re Deciding the Best Book Cover of 2022

Tis the season for some literary pageantry and Electric Literature is hosting our third annual “Best Book Cover of the Year” tournament. You, our beloved readers, will decide a winner amidst a sea of book covers that published in 2022 via an interactive poll on our Twitter and Instagram... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-20 12:00:35 UTC ]
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The Hardest Part of Writing My Memoir Was Telling My Family About It

You should watch Euphoria, a friend told me while we were on a walk during our young daughters’ dance class. I wasn’t sure why she would suggest this. Particularly in the context of our conversation: I was confiding in her about the anxiety that felt like it had been boiling inside of me for... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-13 12:05:00 UTC ]
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Exclusive Cover Reveal: Here’s the cover for Elysha Chang’s A Quitter’s Paradise

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Elysha Chang’s A Quitter’s Paradise, the first book on Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint at Zando, forthcoming in June 2023. This debut novel examines the grief of a young woman desperate to detach from the reality of her mother’s death and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-08 14:30:46 UTC ]
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If You Want to Build a Story, Become an Architect

Mary-Alice Daniel has been on a journey, literally, across continents. She documents her experiences in A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing, which is a memoir about places, from which she has been uprooted, assimilated into, revisited, and settled, giving the reader a close look into the lives... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-05 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is coming to the screen.

The Fall of Tess Gunty (I speak of Autumn, not ruination) continues apace with news that the Indiana author’s much-ballyhooed debut novel The Rabbit Hutch—the story of a group of residents of a low-income housing community in a fictional Indiana town over the course of one sweltering summer—has... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-29 16:36:13 UTC ]
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How to Tell If You Grew Up in a Cult

The first chapter of Daniella Mestyanek Young’s memoir Uncultured opens with a screech: It is 1993 and Mestyanek Young—then 5 years old—is inside a commune in Brazil, standing at the back of a line of children waiting to be paddled. As she explains, it’s a normal day in the Children of God, the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-25 12:00:00 UTC ]
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“You Can’t Hurt Like Me”: A First Look at ‘Bark On’

An exclusive excerpt and cover reveal for 'Bark On,' the debut novel by Mason Boyles. The post “You Can’t Hurt Like Me”: A First Look at ‘Bark On’ appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2022-11-25 11:00:49 UTC ]
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An Indigenous Writer Discovers New and Old Ways to Connect With the Land and With Each Other

Joshua Whitehead can’t be held by genre. Following on the success of his Lambda Literary Award winning novel Jonny Appleseed and poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer, Making Love with the Land is Whitehead’s first full-length work of creative nonfiction. But to describe this book as merely... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-23 12:00:00 UTC ]
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We Partied With Padma Lakshmi, Union Supporter, at the National Book Awards

The National Books Awards returned in full force on November 16, 2022 for a night of in-person glitz after two years of virtual ceremonies. In front of white tents where the literati gathered for photos on the red carpet, publishing workers with the HarperCollins Union, standing in the cold,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-18 12:06:00 UTC ]
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Book Deals: Week of November 21, 2022

The editor-in-chief of Electric Literature sells a debut novel to Random House, Europa takes on a novel by the director of the Turin Book Fair, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-11-18 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Leaving the Church to Find Spiritual Nourishment

The memoir Heretic opens with Jeanna Kadlec boarding a bus to the Middlesex County Courthouse in Massachusetts, where she is filing for divorce against her husband, an Evangelical Christian, and pastor’s son to boot. Kadlec is twenty-five and exhausted from the labor of suppressing her... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-17 12:05:00 UTC ]
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Desperate Writer Query Template*

Esteemed Agent, I’m seeking representation for my [300,000-word rhyming memoir / novel-in-grocery-coupons / famous literary graves calendar**] which is a cross between [Maid and Green Eggs and Ham / a bag of Halloween candy and that novel-in-texts you just sold / an apple watch and a mortuary... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-11 12:05:00 UTC ]
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I’m Proud of My Queer Fandom

The first time I felt possessed by a fantasy series, I was fifteen. It was 2004, and from my family’s small computer room, I spent the after-dinner hours in a web forum devoted to NC-17 Harry Potter fanfiction. This was the same room where my brother had constructed a secret liquor cabinet from... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-11-01 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Louise Kennedy’s Debut Novel Taps Into Her Childhood Amid the Troubles

The book, “Trespasses,” captures the texture of life in Northern Ireland — details, objects and images that carry “incredible emotional weight.” Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2022-10-31 16:21:50 UTC ]
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Book Deals: Week of October 31, 2022

William Morrow bets on a debut novel from Victoria Benton Frank, Harlan Coben re-ups at Grand Central, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-10-28 04:00:00 UTC ]
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How Do You Escape If Your Body Is the Prison?

Endometriosis is classified by Mayo Clinic as a “common” condition, “treatable by a medical professional.” And yet, when Emma Bolden began experiencing aggressive symptoms of the illness in elementary school, she was treated for decades by doctors who neither believed her account of her... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-27 11:05:00 UTC ]
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The Sex is Not Frivolous

I have long been fascinated by books about the early years of the AIDS crisis. Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir from 1988 remains a cherished work; last year’s Let the Record Show by Sarah Schulman and It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful by Jack Lowery provided crucial insights into... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-26 11:00:00 UTC ]
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The Eerie Experience of Watching My Science Fiction Story Become Real

On May 13, I finally got to read my wayward science fiction story “It Is the Voice That Unnerves Me” in The Dread Machine. I had been submitting the story since the spring of 2019, and had thought many times about consigning it to the “retired” list. I knew every word, sentence and section break... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-20 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Cover reveal: Stephen Buoro’s The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Stephen Buoro’s debut novel The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, which will be published by Bloomsbury in April 2023. Here’s how the publisher describes the novel: Andrew Aziza is a fifteen-year-old boy living in Kontagora in Northern... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2022-10-19 13:30:34 UTC ]
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