Washington Small Presses Make Their Mark
While New York remains the center of gravity in the publishing world, a new breed of independent presses in the nation’s capital are set to pull some of that force down south.
(My) 10 Rules For APIA/Hapa Fiction: A Brief Ars Prosae Asianae
Like the Bechdel Test, these ten rules should be treated as the first critical lens that APIA readers (can) use to call out and contest orientalism in publishing while also serving as a mandatory metric by which all readers (can) hold APIA writing accountable as well as the presses
The Importance of Uselessness: Language and Nature in the Poems of A. R. Ammons
The poems of A. R. Ammons focus on easily overlooked, easily dismissed elements of the natural world. Ammons observes the inevitability of time both on a microscopic and global level: how time affects everything from maggots to “drift-logs.”
Review: LONESOME LIES BEFORE US by Don Lee
Don Lee's latest novel proves to be a deceptively nuanced tale about the disconnect between our dreams and the limits of how far we'll go to obtain them.
Sweet and Sour Paris
The more I read about Paris, and whenever I am lucky enough to travel there, I want to know what Paris is really like, not just what I want it to be like. You don’t have to sugar coat it for me.
Meridel LeSueur and the Golden Age of Proletarian Writers
Meridel LeSueur had a radical pedigree, living in an anarchist commune and writing about causes like migrant workers’ rights and Native American autonomy. Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, her novel The Girl became a seminal text for second-wave feminists. But why do few people read her today?
The Art of Inhabiting: Hala Alyan and Characterization
The places and spaces of Salt Houses play a complex role in the craft of characterization.
Ages of Love
Pablo Neruda’s rivers and seas are far from skyscrapers and train lines. His verdant island isn’t much like Eileen Myles’s neon city, where rivers tend to be placid and not ones in which to dip the toes of your feet.
What Plot Can Do
Image, character, language are static, dead things until plot gets a hold of them and makes them move. The more I write, the more I pay attention when I read, the more I understand that I love characters and words and pictures because of the way plot animates them.
Big Picture, Small Picture: Context for Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End
Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End establishes the amateur astronomer as a major name in the last days of the golden age of science fiction. Clarke is “equally at home in the outer galaxies and the troubled psyche of modern man,” states a review in the New York Times.