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Deeply Flawed Mother Figures of Literature: A Reading List
Many current tales of mothers in disrepute are portrayals of transgressions held in secret. Who can fault these mothers for keeping secret facts that might otherwise blot their reputations?...
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Spending Time in Joy Williams’s Celestial Waiting Rooms
“I’d like to go back to the little rooms now. Aren’t there still the little rooms where we can be?” –Joy Williams, Harrow * Among the withering incriminations in Joy Williams’s Ill Nature: Rants and...
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Remembering the short-lived Starbucks lit mag that published Lydia Davis and...
Recently, while editing Nicole Miller’s excellent essay on Joy Williams’ cosmic waiting rooms, I learned a bit of trivia: in 1999, Starbuck’s launched a quarterly literary magazine called Joe. Though...
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19 new paperbacks to tuck into your beach tote this July.
Paperbacks—so lightweight, so convenient, so perfect to accompany you to the beach or wherever you’re off to this summer. Here are a few of those we’ll be toting this month: * Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch...
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Micro, Sudden, Flash, Short-Shorts: A Brief Survey of Even Briefer Fiction
On the morning of his execution, a condemned man watches the sun rise “for the last, and the first, time.” After reading about that man in a one-sentence-long story in Linh Dinh’s fiction collection...
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Back to School for Everyone: Place, Space, and Landscape with Alexandra Kleeman
When I began writing my second novel, Something New Under the Sun, I felt for the first time the thrill and intimidation of truly trying to capture a specific place in fiction. I had lived in Los...
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Uncanny Valleys: Eight Books That Map Worlds Not Quite Like Ours
When I set out to write a satire of tech in early 2019, I came up against the problem of my lack of knowledge of Bay Area topography. A high school victim of Beat Generational trauma, I’d gone to San...
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Sisterhood of the Traveling Stories: On the Literature of Fictional Sisters
“Sometimes I think, She’s so funny and smart and interesting,” Kim Deal famously said about her twin sister and Breeders bandmate, Kelly Deal. “Other times I think, Oh my god, I want to take a knife...
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Joy Williams! Rust Belt writers! Phillip Lopate! 25 new books out today.
July has arrived, and, for American readers, this means that the Fourth of July is just around the corner. Amidst the fireworks and grilled delights (and at-times-questionable displays of patriotism),...
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Joy Williams on the Wild, Lyrical Stories of Brad Watson
Brad was Brad Watson’s middle name. The name he was supposed to go by was Wilton. Wilton Watson. What a mouthful. What could such a name portend for a white Mississippian born in the summer of 1955?...
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“A Countrified Rumpelstiltskin.” On the Visceral, Versatile Stories of Brad...
My grandfather found his mother’s body. She was his neighbor and getting on in years. I’ve imagined the scene, how it might have happened. I’ve pictured my grandfather’s concern after missing her...
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