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 section to […] The post These Middle-Grade Novels Are Some of the Most Formally Innovative Works of Our Time appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-24 11:00:17 UTC ]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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 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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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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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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Short stories, to me, are sparked by desire. I don’t mean they’re all love stories, though they certainly can be. I mean they are collisions or conflagrations, small or spectacular traffic accidents in which the desires of one person bump up against the impossible—whether in the form of some... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-07-26 11:00:00 UTC ]
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I’ve never read the ending of a book first, though I do have a habit of flipping to the back before I begin, turning instead to the acknowledgments page. There are stories embedded here. Acknowledgments capture the real-life intimacies of the literary world and lay bare the backdrop of the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-07-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
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It can be too easy to write villains— people stunted and incapable of love or compassion—when we write about opponents of our politics, especially in short stories, which have so much less space to detail nuance. Sometimes writing about villains and pointing the finger is necessary in a world... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-07-16 11:00:00 UTC ]
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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... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-06-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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I first came to poet Rajiv Mohabir’s work through his cutting meditation on why he will never celebrate Indian Arrival Day, which Guyana celebrates on May 5th to commemorate the arrival of indentured Indian workers in the Caribbean. In the essay for the Asian American Writers Workshop’s The... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-06-22 11:00:00 UTC ]
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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 Cinelle Barnes, author of Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir and Malaya: Essays on Freedom. Barnes is a regular... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-06-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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In March of 2004, my family and I were at home in Taiwan for the national election, and I got into my first-ever screaming match with a perfect stranger. The election choice, as always, was between the Kuo Ming Tang, which favors reunification with China; and the Democratic People’s Party, which... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-06-01 11:00:00 UTC ]
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