Author Archive
Swamplandia!’s Grief
Reflective on themes of environmental degradation and indigenous erasure, Karen Russel’s 2011 novel serves as a memorial to Florida’s past, and as a reminder of the constant fortitude we must maintain to protect this place.
Jack London’s Visionary 1912 Pandemic Novel
London’s book is impressive not just for its correctly intuited factual predictions, but also for those related to the way the inequities of his world would only grow exponentially as its population did, and the way those inequities would define the events that took place during and after the
Desert Myths
In his multimedia venture, Desert Oracle, Ken Layne centers preservation, protection, and treading lightly on the land.
Herman Melville and the Desolation of Solitude
I’d never felt the urgency to see Arrowhead, Melville’s historic home in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, but suddenly robbed of my own social life, it was time for me to go and see why a writer, like Melville, would actually ask for such isolation.
“We shouldn’t just turn inward when we walk”: An Interview with Kent Russell
Russell’s most recent book, chronicling a walk from the panhandle of Florida to the celestial city of Miami, comes to the conclusion that a walking journey should not only be a journey about the self, but also about how the self exists in a built environment.
In Through the Out Door
Jason Diamond’s cataloging of suburban cultural touchstones is a crucial first step towards having a healthy conversation about the suburbs today because, without this consideration, there can be no reconsideration.
Jewtopia
As she got older, anytime someone was thinking of leaving town, my grandmother would implore them to stay, reciting the refrain that has now become a family catchphrase: “Don’t go no place,” she’d say. Family is the place. Nobody understands this interpretation of the utopian ideal better than immigrant
The Canonization of John Kennedy Toole
We’ve spent so much time discussing Ignatius Reilly: his multi-dimensional, timeless creation, but have ignored saying the obvious about John Kennedy Toole—that much of the Dunces mythos is built on the back of his suicide.
Lexicon Land
Florida is in a constant state of post-apocalypse. Authors are not immune to this speculative affliction, and when they set their fantasies in Florida, the reinvention of language abounds.
“If somebody translates your poem and you consider going back to revise it, that’s a good translation.”: An Interview with Ariel Francisco
Francisco’s newest book, presented simultaneously in English and Spanish, is that of a young poet matured, leaning into the naturalist observations present in his previous work and writing haiku with the precision and wisdom of a sure-handed veteran—while infusing them with a trademark sardonic wit.
- 1
- 2