Monthly Archive:: May 2016
Writer-In-Chief: As a Man of Letters, Obama Will Be Missed
In the era of the 24-hour news cycle and ubiquitous WiFi, being a good writer would not seem to be much of an asset to a politician. A commanding TV presence and social media savvy are at least as important. It wasn’t always this way, of course. Until the
The Collective Action of Swan Maidens
Last month I sat through five productions of Swan Lake, five days in a row. Despite a lifetime of ballet—and having danced the role of a swan in the ballet’s second act—I was hazy on the story’s ending. As perhaps I should be, as I’ve found evidence of nine
Round-Up: Roots, Jack Keruac, and the O. Henry Prize Winners
From the auctioning off of Jack Keruac’s famous letter to the next book in the Millennium series, here are the latest literary headlines: The letter that is largely credited as the inspiration for Jack Keruac’s On the Road is going to auction on June 16. Addressed to Keruac and written
Inferno: Reading Eileen Myles in Las Vegas
1 I have a few hours to kill in Las Vegas and I’m looking for a quiet place to finish Eileen Myles’s Inferno. Reading here feels like a radical act; it doesn’t make anybody any money or provide a sense of spectacle. The Vegas Strip seems to discourage it.
Han Kang’s THE VEGETARIAN Wins Man Booker International Prize
Last week, the winner of the newly refocused Man Booker International Prize was announced to be The Vegetarian, a novel by the Korean writer Han Kang, translated into English by Deborah Smith. Originally published as three novellas, the book is the surreal story of Yeong-hye, a young Korean woman
On Failure: Being a Writer Who Translates and a Translator Who Writes
I spent a large part of last spring working in coffee shops all around the Finger Lakes region with a group of writers. One of them had published several novels; another had just signed with an agent and was making revisions to her novel-in-progress; the others were working on
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “I’ll Be Your Fever” by Panio Gianopoulos
In the English language, we use the same word to describe how we feel about of our favorite dessert as we do for our significant other: love. In “I’ll Be Your Fever” (Big Fiction), Panio Gianopoulos explores the various definitions of love through his protagonist Ted, who’s navigating
Fleecing the Shears
As a two-year-old child, British author Evie Wyld went into a coma that lasted half a day. The reason: viral encephalitis. The disease took two weeks to work its way through her nervous system. As a result of her brain being “cooked”—her word choice—slower brain waves mandated seizure medicine
Review: Y. T. by Alexei Nikitin
Y.T. is a tightly-drawn novella with a novel’s breathing room for reflection and reminiscence. While the title and the early pages seem to point at the importance of the game itself, by the end it seems the game was merely an instigator, and could have been any product of
The Best Poem I Read This Month: Sarah Sgro’s “Body as a Plant Expanding”
I’ve read Sarah Sgro’s poetry for about four years, and remain a consistent witness to its various evolutions and concentrations concerning femininity, food, sexuality, and waste. In the past year, Sgro’s work has flourished, wreaked havoc, and run amok through many journals. Because her pieces keep sharpening their