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 larger, teetering precariously on my […] The post The 20 Best Debuts of the Second Half of 2019 appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-24 11:00:28 UTC ]
Safiya Sinclair writes in her memoir How to Say Babylon, “The perfect daughter was nothing but a vessel for the man’s seed, unblemished clay waiting for Jah’s fingerprint.” The memoir, Sinclair’s first, is about her journey to shaping a future that isn’t limited by the idea of the perfect... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Writing about pop culture and current technology is always a gamble, pitting critique of the present against longevity, a story that will still feel relevant after we’re gone. But for novelists (present company included) who were exposed to the Real World before the, um, real world, reality TV... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-27 11:00:00 UTC ]
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As we move into the fall reading season, deeply imagined short stories and inventive linked essays are having a moment alongside novels. What’s thrilling about the books coming out from small presses is the breadth of range—there are intentional and accidental murders, family drama and... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-26 11:15:00 UTC ]
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Queer people have been writing historical fiction since before queerness existed—by which I mean, since before it was hammered into an antithesis to heterosexuality during the long nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth, queers looking to write about the past had to grapple with new,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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In Alissa Hattman’s debut novel Sift, the world, at first, appears hostile to life, nearly uninhabitable. Skies darken with toxins and smoke. Food, especially produce, is scarce. Drinking water is limited, a result of rivers and other natural bodies that have been poisoned. Fires rage and a... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Aurora Mattia’s debut novel The Fifth Wound is a fantastical journey through the formulation of one trans woman’s truth. Mattia’s own recapitulation as protagonist Aurora aka @silicone_angel bridges the gap between ancient Greece, Covid-era Brooklyn, and the rolling fields of Iowa searching to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-01 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Jane Wong’s memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a feast of a book. It’s about hunger—the hungers of the body, of addiction, of history. Brilliant, gutting, and funny, she writes with such range about growing up in her family’s Chinese restaurant in Atlantic City as their reach for the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-31 11:00:00 UTC ]
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John West’s Lessons and Carols is a lyric memoir of recovery, parenting, loss, and hope, which is also periodically quite funny (ex. the first line of the first Lesson, “Caring for this baby has taught me new ways to resent.”) Hopscotching through time, the memoir shows us West’s first, early... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-18 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Ashley Wurzbacher’s debut novel How To Care for a Human Girl jumps with both feet into the debate over reproductive rights. When two sisters find themselves pregnant not long after their mother’s death, Jada choses an abortion, while Maddie drifts into the sticky embrace of a crisis pregnancy... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-08 11:00:00 UTC ]
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The Oracle by Joanna Pearson You name it, Lola’s found it in someone’s ear. A green Skittle, a watch battery, the tarnished back of a gold earring, a bunched-up bit of mint floss, a Lego head. Insects—yes, of course. Roaches of various sizes, a wasp, a small beetle. Hardened ear wax (cerumen,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-31 11:05:00 UTC ]
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As I prepare for the paperback launch of my debut novel The Girls in Queens, I share with a group of writers and artists that I’m putting together a Book Club Kit. This has become a fairly common digital offering; a colorful PDF of brief insights from the author, a recipe or two related to... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-25 11:12:00 UTC ]
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It isn’t unusual for libraries to feature prominently in novels; novelists, after all, are merely adult versions of the little people who fell in love with books at public libraries. But what of librarians? The keepers of the books, the ones who know you prefer romance, science fiction, or... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for Jennifer Croft’s The Extinction of Irena Rey, which will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing on March 5th 2024. Preorder the book here. From the Booker International Prize-winning translator and Guggenheim fiction fellow, a propulsive,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-07 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Kathleen Cheng is having a hell of a Saturn Return. The late-20s protagonist of Jenny Xie’s debut novel Holding Pattern has just been dumped by the man she thought she’d spend her life with. Unmoored and questioning, she drops out of her cognitive psychology graduate program on the East Coast... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Small presses have been publishing excellent work by writers who you may not know (yet). From compelling short stories to heart-wrenching novels, these books will take you on a journey across states and countries, into the past or to the future, as well as deep into the minds of richly-drawn... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Lamya H’s powerful memoir Hijab Butch Blues is an honest grappling with what it means to be queer, to be a devout hijabi Muslim person who resists gender normativity, to love faith and community. Seeking other queer women in Islam as a young person, H wonders if Maryam, whom no man has touched,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-29 11:12:00 UTC ]
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Greg Marshall’s memoir Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It is a brave and hilarious tour de force, taking us through his journey of self-acceptance as he grapples with cerebral palsy, queerness, and the early death of a parent. By offering us a front seat to the uproarious... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-22 11:01:00 UTC ]
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Obsessively scratching her scalp, while simultaneously chiding herself not to, Kendra Rae Phillips sits on a MetroNorth train anxious and jittery. She’s worried about being found, after being found out. Every lingering eye incites more sweat, and more scratching. Relief only comes when her train... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-19 11:07:00 UTC ]
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Kenan Orhan’s debut, I Am My Country, feels like much more than just a book of imaginative short stories set in and around the author’s ancestral homeland of Turkey. The powerful collection could be said to comprise a series of real “small rebellions” — enacted by its characters, prose, and the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-13 11:01:00 UTC ]
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In a cultural milieu that is increasingly recognizing the value of narratives that describe the experience of chronic pain and illness, Emily Wells’ memoir is a unique contribution. In some ways, A Matter of Appearance is not a memoir at all, though that’s where you’ll find it shelved in... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-06 11:05:00 UTC ]
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