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Women in Trouble: The Vanishers
The Vanishers: A Novel Heidi Julavits Doubleday, March 2012 304 pages Shortly after Julia Severn, the heroine of Heidi Julavits’s fourth novel, drops out of the Institute of Integrated...
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The Physics of Fiction, the Music of Philosophy: an Interview with Rebecca...
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s astonishments as a philosopher and as a novelist are too numerous to list here. Already launched in her career as a philosophy professor, she...
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A Land More Kind Than Home
A Land More Kind Than Home Wiley Cash William Morrow, April 2012 $24.99 320 pages I don’t want to obscure the issue here, so I will be brief: A Land More Kind Than Home is a book you will be excited to...
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The Fictional Suburbs
I hadn’t really thought that much about it until a friend—a non-writer friend, for what that might be worth, a musician—pointed it out. I was wrapping up my first year as a PhD student and had invited...
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Mooning for Jack London: A Surprise Crush
Jack London was one of the last dead authors I expected to charm me. I associated him with wolves (because of the familiar The Call of the Wild book cover) and, unfortunately, Disney movies (because of...
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My One-Handed Novel; Or, How I am Learning to Be Both a Parent and a Writer
Despite sometimes-embarrassing attempts at guitar, drums, and bass in my youth, I’m no musician. But if I’m honest, some of the best things I’ve written lately have not been stories or novel chapters,...
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One Year In—Writing the Novel: Allison Lynn
After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance,...
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One Year In—Writing the Novel: Dean Bakopoulos
After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance,...
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Because I Could Not Stop for the Death of the Novel…
There was once a time when we’d all sit around reading essays on how novels are dead. We’d gather in the parlor of an evening—mother, father, daughter, son—the Victrola softly playing in the...
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Review: COYOTE by Colin Winnette
Coyote Colin Winnette Les Figues Press, 2015 96 pages $17.00 Buy: book It’s a natural tendency to summarize, to distill entire constellations of events and details into a single swallow of information....
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Review: THE PAPER MAN by Gallagher Lawson
The Paper Man Gallagher Lawson Published: May 12, 2015 Unnamed Press 261 pages Buy: book A man with a papier mâché body and hair made of yarn attempts to break out of his protected, isolated, and...
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Do-Overs: Summer Odyssey
Each June, my thoughts turn toward home. Toward my kids, bare feet, homemade dinners, and naps. Toward real life. I’ve taught high school for 13 years, I’ve learned to ride the waves of feeling that...
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Review: MAYHEM: THREE LIVES OF A WOMAN by Elizabeth Harris
Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman Elizabeth Harris Gival Press, October 2015 140 pp, $20 Pre-order here In the opening scene of this exquisite first novel by prizewinning short fiction writer Elizabeth...
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Review: SWEET CARESS by William Boyd
Sweet Caress William Boyd Bloomsbury, September 15, 2015 449 pp, $28 Buy here Sweet Caress is the newest novel from the acclaimed William Boyd, author of notable works such as Any Human Heart and A...
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An Interview with Jennine Capo Crucet
I first met Jennine on the dance floor in a barn on a summer night at Breadloaf. Or at least I like to remember it that way. She’s an electric person, both in the flesh and on the page. She says the...
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Words Chosen For Ourselves: A Review of THE OXFORD INDIA ANTHOLOGY OF TAMIL...
The Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing Ravikumar and R. Azhagarasan Oxford University Press, 2012 480 pp, $39.95 Buy hardcover Of the social, political, and economic issues facing India...
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Big Picture, Small Picture: Context for Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART
This blog series, Big Picture, Small Picture, provides a contextual collage for a chosen piece of literature. The information here is culled from newspapers, newsreels, periodicals, and other primary...
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Majestic Endings
As I closed in on the first draft of a novel, I wrote toward an ending I’d held in my mind for months. It was a quiet climax in keeping with the, ahem, literary nature of my novel. I knew that when I...
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The Autobiography of the Imagination: Toward a Definition
The autobiography of the imagination writes itself, one could say. It writes every time we write, every time we dream or daydream. It is its own captain’s log, the transaction and receipt. It reveals...
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Our Matriarchs of Letters
Victoria Woodhull, Carla Hayden, and Anna J. Cooper Every year, the VIDA Count reminds us just how far women have to go in order to achieve gender parity in the publishing world. This Women’s History...
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