Author Archive
Ander Monson’s Essaying
Monson’s newest collection, out tomorrow, continues his exploration of essays and essaying, scrutinizing the “I”; playing with prose and white space on the page; and examining the nature of memory—all while suffusing his observations with the cultural elements he examines in earlier collections.
The Tragedy of Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth’s tragedy is the tragedy of being a woman. What more powerful way to show this than through a difficult woman to like?
Love, Liberation, and Empowerment in Godshot
Chelsea Bieker’s debut novel, out today, feels familiar, devastating, like it has already happened, could, or might again. It’s the story, too, of motherhood in all its iterations, from abandonment to adoption, at the best of times and worst, and the moments, no matter how small, of love.
The Foreboding Landscape in The Impudent Ones
In her debut novel, Marguerite Duras builds a visceral sense of foreboding through the beautiful and unnerving landscapes in the life of protagonist Maud Grant, who is both captivated by the land around her, and often swiftly shut off from it.
Finding the Self in Departure
Leaving the boarding school world was terrifying and painful, but also felt like an act of daring—and it called to the fore other qualities of myself that felt hard to set down, even when I chafed under their burden.
The Limits of Social Media in No One Is Talking About This
Patricia Lockwood’s first novel, out today, is unnervingly not hyperbolic in its lyric, humorous rendering of our social media obsessed world.
Girlhood and Desire in The Lightness
The narrator of Emily Temple’s debut novel, Olivia, holds a deep desire to belong, to be loved, and to be touched—a desire that trumps her regard for safety, leading her to even give up her will to find her missing father.
Now Is Not the Time to Panic’s Exploration of Meaning
Kevin Wilson’s latest novel revolves around a phrase that the protagonist conjures the summer of 1996, when she is sixteen. “It meant nothing,” Frankie thinks. Yet it is a code that bonds her with her friend, two loners finding shared understanding in the meaningless words.
Portraits of Motherhood and Grief
Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, and Lorrie Moore portray mothers transformed by grief, their ideas of motherhood complicated by the crises that befall them.
Making Space
Moving exposes the true quantity of our stuff: there’s too much. And what story do these objects, and the way in which they inhabit space, tell? Our possessions tell the stories of our changing bodies, our relationships, our jobs, the pandemic, the hobbies we’ve given up on, our privilege.