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 that is varied—and vast. Ireland was one […] The post Go Beyond Sally Rooney With These 13 Irish Women Novelists appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
How The Handmaid’s Tale keeps going, with Margaret Atwood, Ann Dowd, and novelists Louise Erdrich and Megan Hunter. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2019-08-29 21:00:04 UTC ]
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The small indie press boom is among us. In both 2017 and 2018, a whopping 40% or more of the National Book Awards longlists included titles from university and independent presses. It’s an exciting time for small presses— never before have there been so many diverse books in the mainstream... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-29 11:00:48 UTC ]
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My stove and I have been at odds for some time now. Beautiful and wasteful, it is the kind that is ubiquitous in Los Angeles kitchens of a certain vintage and which has chrome fins like a muscle car. And like those muscle cars, it is a gas guzzler. Aside from the standard four burners, […] The... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-29 11:00:20 UTC ]
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Ibram X. Kendi opens his latest book with his worst memory as a high school student competing in an oratorical contest. Having spent his short lifetime internalizing negative messages about Black people from Black people, from white people, and from the media and culture at large, Kendi... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-28 11:00:52 UTC ]
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In the popular imagination, the idea of Canadian literature is overwhelmingly dominated by imposing landscapes: the vast emptiness of the prairies, a cruel wilderness that tests the limits of human survival. It makes sense that such settings would loom large––many of the country’s most... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-26 11:00:08 UTC ]
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Tope Folarin’s debut novel is all at once a search for identity, an immigrant story, and a bildungsroman. A Particular Kind of Black Man follows Tunde Akintola, a Nigerian American in a small town in Utah. Torn between the culture of his Nigerian parents, and the white Mormon culture of Utah,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-21 11:00:12 UTC ]
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Welcome back to the 90s. (And, I guess, the early 2000s.) As Variety reports, there is officially a fourth Matrix film in the works, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss back in the saddle as Neo and Trinity. Lana Wachowski will direct; she also wrote the script with novelists Aleksandar Hemon... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-08-20 20:44:00 UTC ]
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The internet search histories of novelists can be quite disturbing. Writer Kathleen Valenti shares the methodology behind web searches for her newest medical mystery. The post The Writer’s Alibi: My Terrible, Dreadful, Hope-the-FBI-Doesn’t-Look-at-This Search History by Kathleen Valenti appeared... Continue reading at Writer's Digest
[ Writer's Digest | 2019-08-20 14:00:45 UTC ]
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When I first joined a workshop in 1994, American literary fiction was dominated by and continually lauded a “quiet” kind of writer, one often influenced by J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, or Raymond Carver. I loved literary fiction—I’d been reading, writing, and submitting it since high school.... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-16 11:00:22 UTC ]
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Regina Porter’s debut novel The Travelers includes short chapters, photos, and a compendium of voices—a full cast is listed in the front matter. This includes the Vincents, with patriarch “the man James” and his son Rufus; the Christies, headed by Eddie and Agnes with their daughters Claudia... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-05 11:00:57 UTC ]
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SCIENCE FICTION HAS BEEN mapping the topography of a yawning postcapitalism since the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s, a laborious undertaking still ongoing in the 21st century. Before cyberpunk, Deleuze and Guattari pointed the way in their books on capitalism and schizophrenia; after... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-08-03 12:30:19 UTC ]
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The Amazon review for my debut novel was glowing, including words like “compelling” and “fun.” And then there was this: “If you love historical fiction, you’ll love The Last Book Party.” Say what? How could my novel, which is set during the 1980s—a decade of my own youth—be historical fiction?... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-01 11:00:53 UTC ]
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During one of my first open mics in New York City, the comic running the mic tapped me on the elbow after my set and said, “Hey, you’re funny!” She sounded surprised. I was, too. Being funny wasn’t my main goal. I was there to spy on comics, trying to experience the highs and lows […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-07-31 08:49:06 UTC ]
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The Blunt Instrument is an advice column for writers. If you need tough advice for a writing problem, send your question to [email protected]. For early access to Blunt Instrument columns, plus a special subscriber-only edition every other month, become a supporter of Electric... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-30 11:00:37 UTC ]
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Writing literary fiction stories? Forget what you’ve learned about complex characters and earned endings. What you really need is to include the required tropes. To help you out, we’ve created this handy checklist. Literary Fiction Trope Checklist _____ 1. Starts with character waking up _____... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-26 11:00:50 UTC ]
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Peg Alford Pursell’s second book, A Girl Goes Into the Forest, contains a collection of 67 short stories exploring moments in the lives of women. Pursell’s first book, Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow, was recognized as a 2017 Indies finalist and a finalist and honorable mention in fiction... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-25 11:00:57 UTC ]
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When I took my copy of Lemony Snicket’s The Carnivorous Carnival up to the check-out line at Barnes and Noble, the cashier flipped through the book and paused. She was sorry, she said, after a couple more puzzled page flips. There appeared to be a misprint. She called an employee in the kid’s... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-24 11:00:17 UTC ]
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It’s a cliché among authors that we write the books we wish existed, but two of the many reasons I set out to write The Lager Queen of Minnesota was because I wanted to read literary fiction set in a brewery, and frankly, I also wanted a reason to bum around the country researching contemporary... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-19 11:00:19 UTC ]
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It doesn’t feel like an exaggeration to say that Mira Jacob’s latest book Good Talk is a blueprint for a kinder world. In this graphic memoir, Jacob details a lifetime of difficult conversations—about politics, about race, about love and relationships. Seeing her handle these tricky talks,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-18 11:00:20 UTC ]
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The Spanish philosopher and poet George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As a genre, historical fiction allows us to shuttle back in time to stand in the shoes, clogs, chopines, and go-go boots of people—real and imagined—to consider the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-15 11:00:13 UTC ]
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