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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Read More Women Literary Trivia Returns!

Test your knowledge of women writers with a fun pop quiz. First Round Name the title and author of the first-ever science fiction novel. This Pulitzer-prize winner and Italian translator declared in 2015 that she is now only writing in Italian. Name this author. The 2018 Nobel laureate for... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-27 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The Long Tail of ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’

Delia Owens’s debut novel has sold more than four million copies — an astonishing trajectory for any new writer, much less for a 70-year-old wildlife scientist. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-21 10:00:08 UTC ]
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Considering Darryl Pinckney and Authenticity

This week, Lauretta Charlton reviews Darryl Pinckney’s collection of essays “Busted in New York.” In 1992, Edmund White wrote for the Book Review about “High Cotton,” Pinckney’s debut novel about a young black man coming of age. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-20 10:00:00 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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Read Harder: A Debut Novel By A Queer Author

Find a new author to follow or the first book your fave wrote with this list of debut novels by queer authors for the 2020 Read Harder Challenge. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2019-12-18 11:31:50 UTC ]
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What We're Reading – December 2019

Text Me When You Get Home: the Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship by Kayleen SchaeferIt’s a non-fiction book about the change in perspective around female friendship over the last few years, featuring interviews with a huge range of people including Judy Blume. The book looks at... Continue reading at British Council global

[ British Council global | 2019-12-17 09:49:28 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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‘Africaville’: Featured Fiction from Jeffrey Colvin

Today, we present an excerpt from a debut novel that earned praise from Victor LaValle, who called it a "gripping and moving book." The post ‘Africaville’: Featured Fiction from Jeffrey Colvin appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2019-12-10 19:30:59 UTC ]
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Tramp Press bags 'stunning' Bourke debut

Tramp Press has bagged the “stunning” debut novel from Irish writer Niall Bourke. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-06 16:27:30 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury scoops McMullan’s debut novel

Bloomsbury will publish journalist Thomas McMullan’s debut novel The Last Good Man in November 2020. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-03 21:48:31 UTC ]
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Legend bags 'stunning' debut from Mustafah

Legend Press has bagged Sahar Mustafah’s "stunning" debut novel charting the background to a shooting at an Islamic school in Chicago. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-03 17:48:49 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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Harvill Secker wins Elaine Feeney's first novel at auction

Irish poet Elaine Feeney’s "dazzlingly inventive" debut novel As You Were will be published by Harvill Secker following an auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-02 15:33:42 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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