I’ve been watching the Extremely Sad Show for Extremely Sad People for a few months now. I only learned this a few weeks ago, though. At an editorial meeting for the literary magazine where I’m a columnist, someone said she was watching “the extremely sad show for extremely sad people.” Another editor immediately asked, “You […] The post “The Leftovers” Is Teaching Me Who I Want to Be After Covid appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2021-06-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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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An urbane attempt to offer belated autonomy to a small band of well-born, well-connected young womenThe scene with which DJ Taylor begins his 26th book, Lost Girls, in which a girl enters, with some trepidation, a literary party in a house in Bloomsbury, is striking for many reasons. It is, as... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-31 07:58:41 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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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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A new Scottish literary magazine from Golden Hare Books manager Julie Danskin and writer Heather Parry has sailed past its Kickstarter target. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-08-04 14:37:35 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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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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This morning, the Whiting Foundation has announced the winners of the second annual Literary Magazine Prizes, which are given “for superb publishing, advocating for writers, and strengthening the literary community.” This year, the number of awards was increased from three to five, with two new... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-07-18 13:00:28 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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