Remembering Jenny Diski
At n+1, philosopher and writer Justin E.H. Smith remembers Jenny Diski, and shares their correspondence. For Diski, death was always the subject, the knot to admire, wryly, and attempt to…
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Kirstin Allio
96 posts
Kirstin Allio is currently a Howard Foundation Fellow at Brown University. Her story collection, Clothed, Female Figure comes out with Dzanc in 2016. Her novel, Garner (Coffee House), was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award for First Fiction. She has received the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” Award, a PEN/O. Henry Prize, and has published many short stories, poems, and essays.
Don’t Judge a Book…
In the Court of Po Biz, I tend to relate to the jester. Over at Entropy, John Yohe does some quick name-checking and decides, a little cynically, by the blurb,…
Telling Your Own Truth
The art of storytelling is largely about choosing what is to be conveyed and—most importantly—what is to be left out. For FSG’s “Works in Progress,” Guillermo Erades, author of the just-released Back…
All About the Essay
John D’Agata, visionary champion of the essay and master anthologizer, sees the lyric form “partake of the poem in its density and shapeliness, it’s distillation of ideas and musicality of…
The Cool Future
“All plots tend to move deathward,” the narrator of “White Noise” says. “This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part…
Poetry as Peace Work
Over at Los Angeles Review of Books, Leah Mirakhor engages poet Robin Coste Lewis, 2015 National Book Award winner of Voyage of the Sable Venus, in deep and generous conversation…
Miracle and Magic
Check out Deborah Treisman in lively conversation with Lara Vapnyar on the “miracle of a New York City adventure,” the bewitching, wish-granting power of Leonard Cohen’s songs, and Russian immigrants.…
Douse, Rattle, and Roll
There’s a treasure trove of poetry recommendations at Tin House’s Open Bar. Jessica Lakritz’s Sex on Sundaze is alive: she writes her lines on human bodies. One Tin House staff member declares,…
Poetry in Paradox
The title of experimentalist poet Rosmarie Waldrop’s new book, Gap Gardening (New Directions), is “classic Waldrop, a phrase that asserts its meaning by undoing itself,” writes Dan Chiasson for the New…
Maggie Nelson’s Flow
Hilton Als of the New Yorker speaks with Maggie Nelson and her partner Harry Dodge about the continuum of life, work, love, and gender. Nelson’s most recent book, The Argonauts, rises with…
Calling the Canon
Don’t miss Kaveh Akbar’s review of Olio, by Tyehimba Jess (Wave Books), for Oxford American: The characters cast in Olio’s poly-vocal swirl count no fewer than a dozen, and almost all…
Poets in Place
Poet Ange Mlinko responds to a challenge from FSG’s Works in Progress series, to “tackle a question—or invent a new one—that lies within [Rilke’s] Letters to a Young Poet.” Mlinko…