Features & Reviews
-
The Shackles of Crime: John J. Lennon’s “The Tragedy of True Crime”
There are more sides to a person than a prison sentence can reveal.
-
The Object of Our Attention: Marisa Meltzer’s ‘It Girl’
…what is it? And can it explain why Birkin’s life is the one we are currently examining, when there are so many others out there who likewise deserve to be “at the center of [their] own narrative”?
-
A Poem Invites You, Warns You, and Then Confounds You: A Conversation with Adedayo Agarau
In The Years of Blood, though, I think what is critical is the multiple selves that exist in the collection. The I resists a single voice—sometimes dead, other times, alive and in fear—and I think that, that is fascinating to…
-
On Dante Alighieri’s ‘Paradiso,’ a new translation by Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Dante Allighieri’s Paradiso by Copper Canyon Press, 2025 displays the enduring power of this classic work of Western literature. For such an old text, a contemporary reader might be surprised by Paradiso’s continuing relevance. Dante…
-
Permanent Knots and Anti-Colonial Archives: A Conversation with Daniela Catrileo
When Chilco appeared in my life, I didn’t know it was going to be a novel. I told my friends I thought I was writing a poem that had just gone on too long, a poem in free prose that…
-
The End is the Place We Begin: A Conversation with Marissa Davis
I remember, too, reading some time ago someone describe Black Americans as being part of a post-apocalyptic culture. We’ve survived the worst: the belly of the slave ship; the tortures wrought upon generation after generation of our ancestors for centuries.…
-
JOYRIDE: A Conversation with Susan Orlean
Taking stock of her own life, she writes about what hurt, what thrilled, and what shaped her. The result is a rare behind-the-curtain view of the golden age of journalism, interwoven with glimpses of Orlean’s childhood, her evolution as a…
-
Joining the World: A Conversation with Patricia Lockwood
“A lot of pandemic novels were about a place where everyone could get away from it and not directly have to deal. I totally understand that, but as a person who was writing about it from the very beginning, probably…
-
Avenging Aaliyah and the Non-Event of Dead Girls: A Conversation with m. mick powell
“ I’ve been saying that I wrote this book to avenge her [Aaliyah]. In my mind, even in childhood, I was like, “I have to do something, whatever I can do with whatever power I have.” It just happens that…
-
Labor and Trauma in the American Workplace: A Conversation with Elaine Castillo
“A lot of people think financial ruin looks like Dickensian destitution. But for many Americans, what it looks like is a never-ending credit card debt. Financial illiteracy can look very luxurious. But the way American fiction describes material possessions, and…
-
Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ed Park, on his Debut Short Story Collection, “An Oral History of Atlantis”
Pale Fire in particular I find genuinely hilarious, and thinking about “Note” now, it reads like a minor variation on that novel’s schema, with the original creator getting in the last word
-
Pizza with Anarchies: “Be Gay Do Crime”: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos
The title is a slogan that’s been floating around a while: “Be gay. Do crime.” Or, “crimes,” plural, if you go from the graffiti credited with the slogan’s origin. It’s associated with anarchism.