Glimpsing Truth in the Impossible with Lynne Sharon Schwartz
The stories in Schwartz’s new collection offer us an invitation to the unknown in ourselves and in the world. Turn to the impossible, they tell us, and explore it. We cannot help but do so since, after all, the impossible is going to show up if we’re ready or
Lorca in the Mirror
In Mirror Suite, Federico García Lorca explores questions of selfhood using the mirror as his guiding motif, asking how love manages to endure when other people’s interior lives seem so utterly inaccessible, and what it means for an imperfect person to be made in the image of God.
Womanhood in Breasts and Eggs
Mieko Kawakami’s 2008 novel addresses the multifaceted nature of what it means to move through the world as a woman, which means presenting womanhood in a variety of ways, ages, and life experiences.
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
Maria Popova’s Figurations of Inner Life
It almost does not matter what someone does or what happens to them. Rather, what matters is what someone thinks they have experienced. As Popova suggests, the true changes in our lives are cognitive as much as they are biographical—or, rather, if they are biographically significant, it is only
“I think writers should write exactly as they please”: An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan
Scanlan’s new collection challenges literary norms, making a story do more than perhaps we previously thought possible.
“The CIA had a huge role in shaping mid-century literature”: An Interview with Lara Prescott
Lara Prescott’s thrilling debut novel focuses on the CIA’s efforts to smuggle and distribute Boris Pasternak’s legendary novel. But it takes a subversive approach, telling the story from the perspective of the unsung women, at both the CIA and in Soviet Russia, who made Pasternak’s legend possible.
The Subtle Interrogation of Power in The Pillow Book
Sei Shonagon’s book, completed in the year 1002, interrogates power and powerlessness through the use of formal hybridity, offering itself up as an unexpected progenitor of our current literary scene.
Reading Letters Summer 1926: Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke
In the summer of 1926, Rilke, Pasternak, and Tsvetayeva are poised on the brink of disaster, but instead of anticipating it, or of dwelling on what may come, they write. Their letters attest to a febrile, almost frenzied creative period.
The Many Voices of Memory in The Magical Language of Others
While a memoir can often feel myopic or even self-indulgent, Koh’s presents clearly the truth that is tucked between the pages of all memoirs—that all of us are pieced together by a multitude of stories told to us and that we, in turn, tell to others.