Notes on the State of Virginia: Journey to the Center of an American Document, Queries X, XI, XII, and XIII
In these queries, Jefferson continues enumerating the features of Virginian civilization: its marine vessels (X), the activities of Native American tribes (XI), the locations of urban centers (XII), and the nature of civic power in the Commonwealth (XIII).
Origin Stories: Zachary Tyler Vickers’s CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR MARTYRDOM!
In the first story of Zachary Tyler Vickers’s remarkable new collection, Congratulations on Your Martyrdom!, an origami hobbyist with pathologically stubby fingers is stuffed like the roadkill he prepares for children. If you’re looking for the fiction about married people drinking lattes, this probably isn’t the book for you.
Obama & GILEAD: Lessons on Loving Thy Neighbor
Recently, an interview that Barack Obama gave in 1995—which was republished in The New Yorker just before the Presidential Inauguration in 2009—made the rounds on social media again.
Round Up: #Brexit, Apple’s E-Book Settlement, and Barnes & Noble’s Tough Year
From #Brexit to Barnes & Noble's major financial hit, here are some of last week's most important literary stories:
This past week, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The referendum (often referred to as "Brexit") took place on June 23.
How to Do Things With Readings: After Cave Canem’s 20th Anniversary
Like any literary form or rule, the poetry reading raises questions regarding subjectivity and context: whose conventions are these, what do they enable, and how do they suit the projects at hand?
Nooks and Tributaries: Literary Journals in the Real World
In graduate school, I worked on the staff of two different literary journals. I was new to the writing world and the idea of working behinds the scenes on a journal—the very kind of journal that I hoped to be published in—was thrilling.
In Bookstores Near You: THE BLACK MARIA by Arcelis Girmay
I found Aracelis Girmay's the black maria in a month filled with keen grief, the kind that follows a tragedy like Orlando or the loss of a loved one so paramount to your life that afterward people just going about their lives seem like a perverse mystery.
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Howler” by LaTanya McQueen
In modern society, what often constitutes progress is the dulling elimination of those instinctual parts of our being that aren’t beholden to conscious thought—say, our hard-wired physical and emotional responses. In “The Howler” (Permafrost) LaTanya McQueen explores the potentially redemptive nature of those impulses that lay beyond our control.
Taking Something Unconventional and Making It Beautiful: An Interview with Elisabeth Jaquette
Elisabeth Jaquette is a prolific writer and translator of Arabic. Her translations have appeared in the Guardian, Asymptote, multiple anthologies, and other places. She holds an MA from Columbia University and was a CASA Fellow at the American University of Cairo.
Review: A BESTIARY by Lily Hoang
Not all rat mazes have corridors. For the Morris water navigation task, it is as it reads: a rat must learn to fare in water. It is placed inside a pool and must swim to the other side.