Author Archive

Knowing and Not Knowing in Italo Calvino’s The Written World and the Unwritten World

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A new collection of Italo Calvino’s nonfiction provides the reader with a deep sense of the range of Calvino’s interests and his open-minded approach to what constitutes art, as well as the pleasure it incites in him.

Midwood’s Elevated Vantages

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There’s a special delight in Jana Prikryl’s concentration about what is outside her window, the changes from season to season, the repetitions, and what is rooted and roots us, if we allow it to do so. It’s both a poetic act, and a necessary one, especially in our fragmented

Temporality and Memory in The Man Who Could Move Clouds

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Rojas Contreras’s memoir intertwines family relationships and legacies, political conflicts and oppressions, and the expansive realm of healing, identity, and magic into a magnificent, mesmerizing memoir.

Exploring “Withoutness” in Solmaz Sharif’s Customs

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Solmaz Sharif’s language is spare and all the more sharp for what remains. Her poems explore “withoutness” in one’s history, and it’s through that withoutness that this collection takes shape, revealing an enormity of presence, of emotion, and of meaning.

Displacements and Digressions in Saša Stanišić’s Where You Come From

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In Saša Stanišić’s impressive and touching novel, digressions are the journey, as we too move through make-your-own-adventure lives, in which where you are from, and even where you are going, are of transient import.

Matthew Specktor’s Tender Ode to Failure in Always Crashing in the Same Car

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Matthew Specktor’s memoir is an intimate investigation of one man’s imperfect life.

Reinventing Loss in The Vault

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Cerpa navigates the helplessness of trying to express what is inexpressible amid the cruel accrual of despair.

Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero

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Natalie Shapero is an incisive social critic cutting through the smog of self-absorption and contradictions between what is said and done.

Peach Blossom Paradise by Ge Fei

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Excerpt: For those who are willing to submerge in an intricate and linguistically sumptuous story, Ge Fei’s new novel offers a rewarding world to explore.

Conjure by Rae Armantrout

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Conjure offers a magic of its own, with sly and unforgettable juxtapositions of the minute and the exceptional, elevated by the intellect, flair, and confidence of a poet at the top of her game.