October 2016

  • Taking It to the Street

    We had to ask everyone. Not just the people who looked “good” to get money from. And that was great because of course I was surprised by who responded and who didn’t. I feel, in general, in my life at…

  • This Week in Indie Bookstores

    The Feminist Bookstore made famous by Portlandia has kicked the show out, saying the show “throws trans femmes under the bus.” Specialty bookstores are finding that filling a niche is often the best way to survive the onslaught of online competition.…

  • Profiling the Princess of Darkness

    The four books Gaitskill produced over the next two decades, all of them rife with sexual violence and self-destruction, cemented her reputation as the “Princess of Darkness”—as did her much-discussed past. Gaitskill, who was born in Kentucky and raised in…

  • Future Sex by Emily Witt

    Future Sex by Emily Witt

    Nina Sparling reviews Future Sex by Emily Witt today in Rumpus Books.

  • The Amazing Fashion Week Adventures of Michael Chabon and Son

    For GQ, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon applies his discerning eye to a subject close to his heart: his fashion-obsessed son: He would lay out its components, making a kind of flat self-portrait on the bedroom floor—oxford shirt tucked inside of…

  • Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee

    Swiss banks are OUT now it’s all about storing your money in secret Alpine gold vaults. Violating all of my self-imposed Morning Coffee rules to offer up this terrifying thought: If trump wins this election he will be added to…

  • Trail’s End

    Trail’s End

    “This must be where we meander,” I said with relief. “How far do you think we’ve come?”

  • Publish a Book in Twelve Easy Steps

    Comedian Sara Benincasa is no stranger to being a working writer—in fact, she just wrote a book about it. Now, at Medium, she shares her secrets on getting published. Accessible and funny, Benincasa offers tips like “NO MONEY UPFRONT BECAUSE ANY…

  • Women and Instrumentality

    She hasn’t been shown any other options. But can she invent a new option? Over at Bookforum, Anelise Chen sits down with Alexandra Kleeman, author of the new collection Intimations, to talk about femininity, dread, and menace in her stories,…

  • Sex, Money, and Art Forgery

    “Novels about psychically and sexually burdened paintings have a rich literary pedigree,” writes UNC Professor of Art History Maggie Cao for Public Books. Cao’s essay tackles the subject of forgery, which puts “the intimate, almost magical role that works of art play…

  • Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote: Jay Baron Nicorvo

    Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote: Jay Baron Nicorvo

    So my No-Trump Vote is for all the grown kids of single mothers, in the hope that they come to value—before it’s too late—the person who more closely resembles our sacrificing moms than our dodgy deadbeat dads.