Series Archive
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Golden Land” by Sunisa Nardone
The ways in which we humans find our sense of community and identity—nationality, race, religion, class, family etc.—are often also what make connecting with people that don’t share our backgrounds more difficult. Sunisa Nardone’s “Golden Land” (Atlas and Alice) explores the many obstacles facing strangers struggling to connect while awaiting
Review: SPILL SIMMER FALTER WITHER by Sara Baume
How to express the unsayable in language? If there is one shared pursuit among writers, it is perhaps this: to capture an elusive essence, to paint emotion with words. In her debut novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither, Irish author Sara Baume meets this enduring challenge to astonishing effect, adeptly
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Fatherhood” by David Rutschman
How many words does it take to encapsulate a feeling? An experience? A story we looked at two weeks ago, “Love” by Clarice Lispector, spends just under 3,500 words exploring its title, where Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom takes well over 500 pages plumbing its own. While “Fatherhood” by David Rutschman
Do-Overs: 5 Books that Tell The Untold Story
Some of the best rewrites of classic stories come to us through the author’s imaginings of what the original doesn’t say. Through original work that transcends “fan fiction,” these stand-alone novels and plays work best when they have their own story to tell. Whether this is done through expanding narrative
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Volcano Climber” by Courtney Craggett
Augustine of Hippo wrote “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” In her short story “Volcano Climber” (Juked), Courtney Craggett explores the nature of the first of
Literary Blueprints: The Monster
Despite the simple title, the Monster is perhaps one of the most complicated, shifting characters in literature, past and present. Much of defining the Monster means defining ourselves and our views of the world. No other character relies so much on perspective to explain who (or what) the evil
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Love” by Clarice Lispector
There have been many craft essays written over the last few decades arguing the merits of the classic Joyce-ian epiphany. In “Love,” (The Offing), Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson) explores the nature of epiphanies, and perhaps more importantly, what we do with them once they happen. We meet
Reading as Intoxicant, Part I: Neurochemical Qualities of the Modern Manic Page Peeler
Richard Wright once wrote that reading is like a drug. Countless other authors have written some variation of that same assertion. If you’ve ever found yourself crushed in a corner weeping like a crazy person because the end of your latest literary fixation was fast coming to a close,
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Fanfare” by Bruno Nelson
Wake up one morning and go to the nearest busy street and sit down on a bench and watch how people walk. Their gait, their posture, their stride, their tempo—these could all tell us a little something about their lives and how they interact with the world. I see
The Economic Crisis and Survival of Greek Letters Part 2: Growing Up
Like most good things in my life, I stumbled upon Yiorgos Chouliaras’ poem, “Grow Up,” by accident. It came to me like one of the great gifts from the literary Gods—in an e-mail no less. I read it, I loved it, I printed it out and taped it to