The City Can’t Replace Her Best Friend

Julia by Ada Zhang When she was twenty-two she used to spend what little money she could have saved on hardcover books, lattes, and croissants. She read in cafés alone and anonymous, with no reason except to offer the world a glimpse of her. Ten years later, she was leaving and decided to revisit all […] The post The City Can’t Replace Her Best Friend appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'

[ Electric Literature | 2023-05-03 11:05:00 UTC ]

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Inheriting the Legacy of Japanese Imperialism

Take a kaleidoscope, peer inside its lens and turn the dial: the jeweled-mosaic pattern within deforms and reforms anew. Asako Serizawa mirrored her debut short story collection Inheritors after this complex design. Out of chronological sequence, the thirteen short stories locate twelve related... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-11-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Which Book Cover Looks Better, the British or American Version?

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of heated discourse surrounding a trend in book covers in which many new releases opt for variations of the same colorful abstractions: The Blob. Somehow deemed appropriate for everything from dystopian debuts to literary fiction bestsellers, these... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-11-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Graphic Novel About 100 Years of Matrilineal Family History, From South China to Singapore

To hear Weng Pixin tell it, Let’s Not Talk Anymore started out as a kind of “fuck you” move after a particularly bad fight with her mom but—as these things tend to go—it gradually transformed into a project to locate herself within the moth-eaten story of her matrilineal line.  Moving back and... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-11-04 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Forget Billionaires! The Future Of Literary Magazines Depends On Us

Dear Readers, In what feels like a never ending cycle of disappointing media news, last week we in the literary community were astonished to learn that after two decades The Believer magazine will discontinue publication. (Since 2017, The Believer has been published by the Black Mountain... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-10-28 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Which Book Should You Read This Halloween?

This spooky season, we’ve curated a reading list for every type of reader. Craving the adrenaline rush of a horror novel full of jump scares? Looking to be spooked on a journey through the dark, haunted woods? What about a twisted retelling of classic Russian fairytales? Here are the books you... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-10-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Magical Realism Short Stories Haunted By Emotional Ghosts

I think a lot of us believe in ghosts. In fact, many of us are likely haunted by them. I’m talking about emotional ghosts, of course.   My debut short story collection, Those Fantastic Lives: And Other Strange Stories, has a particular fascination with ghosts. In my stories, there are certainly... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-10-14 11:00:00 UTC ]
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This Filipino American Memoir Confronts Privilege, Sacrifice, and Colonialism’s Legacy

Like the complex Philippine history the book aims to depict, there is no single sentence that can sum up Albert Samaha’s Concepcion, especially when he renders that history through the lens of his own diasporic family, dating back to his ancestors’ first encounter with Europeans. Though... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-10-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Seeing My Filipino Immigrant Self in Ellison’s “Invisible Man”

As a Filipino American immigrant, I’ve been aware of my invisibility from the time I set foot in the United States. I perceived it when coworkers looked past me, when store clerks and waiters talked to my white companions instead of me, and when editors and literary agents told me Filipino... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-28 11:05:21 UTC ]
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The Real Reason Anna Qu Wants You to Pay Attention to Praise

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 month we’re featuring Made in China author Anna Qu, who will be leading a year-long Online Memoir Generator for writers of color... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-28 11:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Flash Fiction Collections You Should Be Reading

Flash fiction has never been hotter. A tectonic shift over the last 20 years in how narrative is conveyed—fueled largely by the online journal’s rise from (mostly) irrelevance to somewhere near the top of the literary fiction food chain—has created the perfect environment for disseminating... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Stories That Wrestle With Black Girls’ Coming of Age

The flash fiction literary community is like an extended family. If you are a writer and reader of flash, it is in all likelihood that your inner circle of literary peeps are other flash fiction folks or, you at least, know of one another. Six degrees is more like one or two in this community.... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Yiyun Li on Starting a Virtual Book Club During the Pandemic

When I first meet a writer on the page, I pose a simple question: What don’t you ask permission for? In Yiyun Li’s case, the answer is her freedom. Individualism might seem inevitable for a woman who was born in China and whose early work responds to authoritarianism, but—reading Li—one senses... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-15 11:00:00 UTC ]
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10 New Books Written and Translated by Women

For Women in Translation month, we’ve curated a reading list of novels and short story collections written and translated by women. Exploring everything from gender biases and millennial burnout in the Japanese workplace to a toxic relationship in Iceland, these stories expand our perspectives... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Why Linguistically Diverse Audiobook Casting Matters

Over the last decade there has been a push towards better representation in visual media. While movies and television have provided more examples of non-white characters in key roles, there has also been an uptick in linguistic diversity in film. Movies like Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, which slips... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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“The Rock Eaters” Uses Magical Realism to Explore What It Means to Be the Other

The stories in The Rock Eaters often have an elastic relationship with reality, familiar political landscapes or emotional struggles warped by the uncanny. Some stories fall more explicitly within the bounds of science fiction or fantasy, but most show us a world nearly known, but not quite. In... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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8 Books That Illuminate the Hidden Histories of Hollywood

Hollywood. It’s one of those locations—it’s hard, somehow, to call it a concrete place—that conjures up all sorts of archetypes: the ruined writer, egomaniacal director, sleazy executive, out-of-control star. In writing my memoir Always Crashing in The Same Car—a book with elements of criticism,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-11 11:00:00 UTC ]
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7 Short Stories About the Inner Lives of Athletes

The 2020 Tokyo Games will be defined by many things—the anachronism of its title, the risk of superspreading, the welcome absence of Matt Lauer—but, hopefully, these Olympics will also be remembered for bringing mental health to the forefront of popular discourse. Simone Biles’ “twisties.”... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-10 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Denne Michele Norris Takes the Helm at 'Electric Literature'

Denne Michele Norris has been named editor-in-chief of 'Electric Literature' starting on August 10. She succeeds Jess Zimmerman, who had held the role since 2017 before stepping away earlier this summer. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-08-09 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Redefining What It Means to Be a Horse Girl

It could have been soccer or tap dancing, it could have been Dungeons & Dragons or Model United Nations, but for editor Halimah Marcus and the contributors of the new anthology Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond, what stamped them most profoundly... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-04 11:00:00 UTC ]
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A Memoir About Divorcing the Patriarchy

Gina Frangello had a suspicion there was a hunger to talk about women who break the rules. In advance of the release of Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism and Treason, she admits after some prodding, “I got more letters from women before this book came out than I ever received for... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2021-07-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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