Reading Archive
What are Words For?
“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.” I’ve always bristled at Nietsche’s many remarks on language. Here’s another: “All words are prejudices.”
Couples, Talking (About Sex)
A funny thing happened to me this summer: I got trapped in the Sexual Revolution.
The Bitter Southerner’s New Song of the South
"Sometimes you just gotta show people," writes Chuck Reese, founder and editor of The Bitter Southerner, an online magazine of writing, photography and music from and about the South. Reese, like many natives, grew tired of the clichés about the South as a region of yahoos.
THE SWAN BOOK Is Australian Aboriginal Dystopian Lit
Australian Aboriginal novelist Alexis Wright’s latest offering, The Swan Book, brings us a dystopian satire with touches of magical realism. The futuristic tale takes place in Australia after climate change has ruined the world.
Writing People Reading Books: Tracking the Elusive Reader
A writer is first – perhaps foremost – a reader. Why, then, is it rare to find our characters reading? It’s not that we don’t find books given a special place in fiction. Writers love writing about books.
Sonja Livingston Resurrects Long-Dead Women in Hybrid Essay Collection
Women long dead become reanimated in Ladies Night at the Dreamland. We sit beside blood-splattered lovers in 19th century Tennessee, sway on a steamer across Italy with a fatally ill women, hear ghosts knock at the command of two New York sisters at the dawn of spiritualism.
Bodily Shifts
I’m currently about five months pregnant with our second child, and I’m finding this state no less strange the second time around. It’s plenty of other things too—miraculous, exciting, fascinating, wonderful—and I’m very grateful for it; but in describing the actual daily, bodily experience, that’s the word that first
Juan Villoro’s “The Guilty” Decenters What It Means To Be Mexican
Last month I found myself in the gardening section of a German supermarket where, on sale, I came across Mexican-themed cacti. Tiny, impossibly hairy things with googly eyes and black moustaches and pastel colored sombreros made of clay. Typical German kitsch. “That looks like my uncle Mario,” I thought.
Finding a {Digital} Home
This June, I was in Victoria, B.C. for a conference and summer institute that took me away from home for ten days. I was surrounded by water & mountains, fresh air & kindness, and it felt like just the kind of intellectual and emotional salve I needed after yet
Parents Experimenting On Their Children in Fiction
It’s unsurprising that parenting is fertile ground for novelists. There are plenty of stories, both in fiction and in real life, of parental sacrifice for the sake of children. More surprising are the accounts of parents using their children for the sake of their work.