A Novel Solution
I just wanted to leave this in the world, and see what the world would do with it. Ever wonder what to do with all those extra books around your…
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Stephanie Bento
218 posts
Stephanie Bento is a writer, classical cellist, and photographer living in Washington, DC. In her writing, she is interested in exploring the musicality of sound and form, and our connection to time and place. Find out more about her creative work at saudadebelle.com, or say hello/bonjour on Twitter @saudadebelle.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Favorite Books
When texture and feeling and specificity is expressed so exquisitely in the prose that you feel you must understand the writer. For the New York Times’s “By the Book,” actress Gwyneth…
Thrilling and Bewildering
Her poems’ shifts from the tactile and concrete to the amorphous and the abstract is simultaneously thrilling and bewildering… In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Noemi Press poetry editor…
Oyeyemi’s Luminous Universe
Author Laura van den Berg has glowing words about Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. In her New York Times book review, van den…
Lovely in Person and on the Page
The deeper I get into this life of writing and making things, the more I understand that I don’t know. … As long as I feel like I’m trying to…
The Art of Losing Isn’t Hard to Master
Just as there is subjective rejection, there’s subjective acceptance—the editor who sparks to your characters, your plot, your manuscript because of their personal experiences—and you want someone who understands your…
Miranda July’s Favorite Things
There’s no law against asking strangers about their lives and feelings, although sometimes it really feels like there is. Do you know which books you’d take with you if you…
Hello! Bonjour! Hola! Hallo!
Interpreting someone’s utterance often requires attending not just to its content, but also to the surrounding context. What does a speaker know or not know? What did she intend to…
Startling Places
For the New York Times, Lydia Kiesling reflects on Sara Majka’s debut collection, Cities I’ve Never Lived In: I assumed right away that I knew exactly what kind of book this…
Just Dance
Well, that’s the point of being alone—it’s not anything to do with you. It’s about being something in someone else’s life, and no one ever knows the difference, or the…
The Truth about Memory
Once I decided I wasn’t going to stop if I flinched, I figured I was opening myself up to some hard stuff. So, when it came, I kind of expected…
An Urban Sort of Loneliness
The Lonely City bristles with heart-piercing wisdom. Loneliness, according to Laing, feels “like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.” Later, she admits that at one point…