Before the stay-at-home orders came down in Baltimore, the last thing I did in person was participate in a panel conversation about—ironically—“art and the apocalypse.” In retrospect, we should have cancelled, but the threat in Maryland still felt surreal; those were the days when it seemed like we could beat the pandemic by washing our […] The post It’s Time to Radically Rethink Online Book Events appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2020-07-28 11:00:00 UTC ]
The Older Brother in Mahir Guven’s debut novel drives for a ride-sharing service in Paris while his Syrian-born father is an old-school taxi driver. Their Uber politics conflict is further sullied by their religious divergence. Into this, Guven adds a Younger Brother, a talented nurse who could... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-08 11:00:58 UTC ]
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Translating one medium into another is tricky. Music is music and art is art and dance is dance; to try to convey the power of another art in fiction is its own sleight-of-hand. My own first novel takes on that challenge. In A Song For A New Day, musician Luce Cannon was on the cusp […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-07 11:00:15 UTC ]
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If you have a spare 35 grand or so, you now have a shot at a rare copy of the first book banned in America. Christie’s Auction House in New York recently announced that it will be auctioning a copy of New Canaan by Thomas Morton, a 1637 political satire that caused outrage among New […] The post... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-03 11:00:38 UTC ]
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Note: Masie Cochran is Jeannie Vanasco’s editor for her memoir Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. “I’ll tell him: I still have nightmares about you,” Jeannie Vanasco writes early in her second memoir, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. The “him” in question is Mark, a man... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-03 11:00:04 UTC ]
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Did you know that there’s an entire genre of books dedicated to white people going to Nepal to find themselves? I didn’t either! But it’s not so surprising since the release of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, and its 2010 film adaptation, which has caused an uptick in tourism to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-10-02 11:00:13 UTC ]
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When you meet Archie Bongiovanni, you may feel as though you already know them. The jorts, the stick-n-poke tattoos, the larger-than-the-room laugh that means you always know where they’re standing. That’s because Bongiovanni’s incredibly endearing energy winds up all over the page in Grease... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-27 11:00:50 UTC ]
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It is next to impossible to read every debut book that comes out in a single year. Even for me, a person who has dedicated the year to reading as many debuts as humanly possible and interviewing newly-published authors for my website Debutiful. Every month, my to-be-read pile grows larger and... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-24 11:00:28 UTC ]
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In his poignant and strikingly insightful novel of 1956, The Lonely Londoners, Samuel Selvon shapes his narrative through the eyes of Caribbean migrants (now commonly referred to as the Windrush generation) upon their arrival to London post-World War II. His Trinidadian characters, having been... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-12 11:00:55 UTC ]
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Within the first week it was published, Bassey Ikpi’s essay collection I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, a collection of personal essays illuminating and encapsulating the experience of having mental illness, hit the New York Times bestseller list. What Ikpi depicts in I’m Telling the Truth... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-12 11:00:01 UTC ]
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I scoured the parenting and pregnancy sections in Barnes & Noble, but the only books I could find about pregnancy exclaimed about it happily. I moved on to memoir, fingers running over the bindings of book after book. Where are the ones for women like me? I wondered. Women who don’t know... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-10 11:00:05 UTC ]
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Back in May, I signed an embargo agreement on behalf of my bookstore stating that I would “ensure that [The Testaments by Margaret Atwood] is stored in a monitored and locked, secured area and not placed on the selling floor prior to the on-sale date.” The idea behind such agreements is that... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-06 11:00:49 UTC ]
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We’re back with our rejected book cover series, where designers walk us through the process and show us the book covers that could have been. (For previous entries in this series, see here and here.) What kind of planning and thought goes into the cover design process, and what beautiful art... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-30 11:00:07 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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A hot summer's debate at The New York Times around 'fake and illegitimate' online book sales. Amazon asserts a remedy may take more industry cooperation. The post David Streitfeld’s Orwellian Shopping List, and Amazon’s Retort appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-08-20 14:41:20 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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