Series Archive
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Restoration” by Ann Joslin Williams
In “Restoration” (Carve), Ann Joslin Williams shows how a widower’s memories and the discovery of a dead body conflate in the present moment, to dramatic effect.
“frank ocean and all black things that disappear on their own”: A Conversation with Jonathan Jacob Moore
A discussion with Jonathan Jacob Moore regarding Frank Ocean, blackness, queerness, presence/absence, music, and Moore's recent poem "frank ocean and all black things that disappear on their own."
With Late Capitalism Hovering in the Background: In Conversation with Wendy Xu and Jesse Hlebo
“We live in a late-capitalist situation where if something is not worth money then culture says it’s not worth anything at all.”
Fiction Responding to Fiction: Jamaica Kincaid and John Keene (and Edgar Degas)
Jamaica Kincaid's classic story "Girl," first published in the New Yorker in 1978, is a small gem, consisting of less than 700 perfectly chosen words. We can see the echoes of Kincaid in John Keene's story "Acrobatique" even though the story was not written intentionally to respond.
Throwback Thursday: Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust is a rare set of novels that only becomes more accessible as time goes by, reflecting the facets of human nature that have only become more prevalent in the eight or so decades since the collection was first published.
Frontload the Strangeness: On Mark Slouka’s “Dog”
It seems that every book I’ve read recently has a talking animal in it. A new favorite is Max Porter’s novel, which begins with a protagonist opening the door to find a life-sized crow on his doorstep. The bird picks the man up, cradles him in his wings.
Writing Trauma: Notes of Transcendence, #2–The Book as Companion
Examining painful truths, I left behind the stories. I developed an aversion to reading. When I picked up a book, it was as if my brain closed a door. How could I, a writer and an English professor, no longer have a desire to read?
The Best Poem I Read This Month: Joey De Jesus’s “Materia VII”
“Materia VII,” the new poem by Joey De Jesus featured in this month’s WILDNESS, an online literary arts journal published in coordination with Platypus Press, uses several relational jumping off points to supercharge the text-scene.
Things That WIRED Magazine Doesn’t Talk About: In Conversation with francine j. harris and Devin Kenny
Poet francine j. harris and artist Devin Kenny explore how technology affects language, how they go about the processes of investigating their own work, and who their mentors are–as well as how they themselves have mentored others.
Big Picture, Small Picture: Context for Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red-Headed League”
Summer, 1891. Mysteries abound in southern England. On the evening of August 8th, a “perfectly sober” woman is seen walking home on a stone road in Epsom. Early the next morning she is found dead in the street, her throat cut, sending out gruesome echoes of Jack the Ripper.