Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel, How High We Go in the Dark, is everything I love about speculative fiction. It’s sweeping in scope, yet profoundly personal in its concerns; its explorations cast light on intimate aspects of the human condition even as it casts shadows on the wall that thrill us, frighten us, make us question what we know.
Read MoreA debut collection of short stories from a Pakistani writer who is writing in English is a rare thing. And to see the city of Karachi, for instance, through the eyes of a writer who weighs each sentence with deliberation and kindness is a revelation.
Read MoreMillennials get a bad rep—lazy, entitled, addicted to the internet (and themselves). They also came of age and into adulthood during the great recession and have been identified as the first generation to earn less than their parents.
Read MoreAlexander Dumas once wrote that all human wisdom could be summed up in two words, “wait and hope.” In his new book, Infinitely Full of Hope: Fatherhood and the Future in an Age of Crisis and Disaster, British philosopher Tom Whyman spends time dissecting the latter.
Read MoreFlorida sings. From Zora Neale Hurston and the Highwaymen, to Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, to debut Black women fiction writers Dawnie Walton, Deesha Philyaw, and Dantiel W. Moniz, I continue to listen.
Read MoreAs one of the most formally innovative writers today, Sarah Minor is pushing past page-bound boundaries. Her essay collection, Bright Archive (Rescue Press, October 2020), investigates place and space, asking readers to flip the book upside-down while exploring a commune, travel down a textual river to make meaning through mapping, and nest inside tens of parentheticals to cocoon themselves in the concept of home.
Read MoreAt the 2019 Lambda Litfest in L.A., I listened to Sam Cohen read from “Sarahland,” the titular story of her linked collection from Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group (published March 2021). At one point, the writer friend sitting next to me leaned in, sighed, and whispered, “So good.”
Read MoreHope abounds in Adam Clay’s poems, but it arrives like sandpaper, rubbing the soul down to its truest form.
Read MoreIndian literature is extremely diverse, spreading over multiple vernaculars and dialects, each with vibrant histories. Indian writing in English also represents an old body of work that long precedes the country’s independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Read MoreA Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa (Seven Stories Press) and Straight from the Horse's Mouth by Meryem Alaoui (Other Press) seem similar at first glance, at least topically; they’re both accounts of Moroccan sex workers interested in ideas like survival, self-sufficiency, connection, isolation, and loss.
Read MoreLong before I met her, I read Alysia Sawchyn’s essays in Catapult, Brevity, Diagram, and elsewhere. I admired her ability to write with such confidence, sharing parts of herself that other essayists often shied away from or tiptoed around.
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