The Midwest is the Future of American Literature
Flavorwire’s Jason Diamond insists that writers can eschew New York City in favor of greener pastures, offering a comprehensive defense of Franzen country: A closer look at the literary map of the 50…
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Ian MacAllen
1314 posts
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He tweets @IanMacAllen and is online at IanMacAllen.com.
Fundamentals of Korean Literature
The Airship offers us a quick lesson on Korean literature with this brief introduction to three seminal works, by Heo Gyun, Kim Yujeong, and Kim Sungok, spanning the 16th to…
Pippi Longstocking Has Best Week Ever
Not only did the beloved redheaded children’s character get a shout-out from Lena Dunham, but Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren will be immortalized on Sweden’s 20 Krona note.
Understanding Experimental Writing
Too often new writers expect experimental fiction simply means abnormal page layouts, says Sequoia Nagamatsu, an editor for Psychopomp. Writing in The Review Review, Nagamatsu explores a better definition: In…
YA Heroines Don’t Get Fat (Or Tall)
The action heroine archetype is enjoying something of a golden age with blockbuster young adult novels like The Hunger Games and Divergent series starring strong female leads. But Julianne Ross…
We’d Rather Be Looking at Pictures of Kittens, or How We Learned to Love TL;DR
We’ve probably all found ourselves in the middle of reading a long internet post only to conclude we’d rather spend our time looking at pictures of kittens. Anobium examines the…
The Horror, the Horror of Short Form Fiction
Despite the publication this past year of behemoth novels like Donna Tartt’s 750 page The Goldfinch and Eleanor Catton’s 850 page The Luminaries, current trends increasingly embrace truncated fiction. MobyLives…
The How and Why of Reading
Writing “in defense of reading” essays is an outmoded literary form. Leo Robson points out in an examination of a slew of new books that reading, unlike other pastimes such…
Notable NYC: 3/22–3/28
Saturday 3/22: Ariel Gore reads from her new memoir, The End of Eve (February 2014). Bluestockings, 7 p.m., free. Rob Halpern and Ann Lauterbach join the Segue Series. Halpern’s collection…
Notable NYC: 3/15–3/21
Saturday 3/15: Josef Kaplan and Ann Hirsch read poetry. Kaplan’s latest book, All Nightmare: Introductions 2011-2012 collects the prefatory remarks written while curating the Segue Series. Hirsch’s Twelve, censored as…
Notable NYC: 3/8–3/14
Saturday 3/8: Ben Marcus talks about his new story collection, Leaving the Sea (January 2014), Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House. Brooklyn Public Library, 4 p.m., free. Craig Morgan Teicher,…
Notable NYC: 2/22–2/28
Saturday 2/22: Diane Josefowicz, Justin Boening, Marina Kaganova, and Bianca Stone celebrate the release of the Spring issue of The Saint Ann’s Review. KGB, 7 p.m., free. Chris Chosea will…