A Language for Extinction: Zaina Alsous’s A Theory of Birds
And if you ask of her to come to you, her answer is refusal.
...moreAnd if you ask of her to come to you, her answer is refusal.
...moreKelly J. Baker discusses her new essay collection, FINAL GIRL.
...moreEula Biss discusses her new book, HAVING AND BEING HAD.
...moreThea Matthews discusses her debut poetry collection, UNEARTH [THE FLOWERS].
...moreCooper Lee Bombardier discusses his first book, PASS WITH CARE: MEMOIRS.
...more“Our memories are always in flux.”
...morePoet Matthew Olzmann discusses his work with Julie Marie Wade.
...moreRheea Mukherjee discusses her debut novel, THE BODY MYTH.
...moreThere is at least one monster on every team.
...moreMaking it to thirty seems unimaginable, yet it happens anyway.
...moreI’m hungry for truth and kids are just spouting facts up and down the street.
...moreIlya Kaminsky discusses his new collection, DEAF REPUBLIC.
...moreNamwali Serpell discusses her debut novel, THE OLD DRIFT.
...moreTo write is not to dream.
...more“Honestly, I couldn’t write a non-transgressive woman if I tried.”
...more“The cusp of errand and awe is where poetry always is for me.”
...moreDavid Biespiel discusses his new book, The Education of a Young Poet, being comfortable in uncertainty, and extending moments in writing.
...moreI don’t want to say “calculated conversations.” I don’t want to say “I push my needs away.” I don’t want to admit I can’t control how our interactions go.
...moreMaybe I’ve been here too long. Maybe I’ve finally accepted that the apartment is somehow aspirational. Maybe there’s this dragon.
...moreDanielle Trussoni discusses her new memoir, The Fortress, black magic, the cult of marriage, and the dark side of storytelling.
...moreAnxiety disorients me from inside. My heart moves so erratically I’m afraid it will give out, my breath so staggered I have to remind myself to take in air.
...moreAutumn is the season of change and, some say, death, as the leaves turn, the air cools, and the nights lengthen. Likewise, Halloween is not just a holiday for costumes and candy but also, at its untouched roots, a day for remembering loved ones passed. So, fittingly, the quarterly online literary magazine Psychopomp, named for […]
...moreAt Necessary Fiction, Anna Rowser’s story “Breaking Down” effectively uses the subject of recycling as a metaphor to subtly explore what the narrator wants, needs, uses, reuses, and casts off both physically and emotionally. It’s fiction that makes you rethink what you’ve been throwing away: Despite her best efforts, she was doing little to hold […]
...moreThis week at Recommended Reading, PEN America offers an excerpt from Brazilian author Noemi Jaffe’s novel Írisz: as orquídeas, which is remarkable for many reasons, one of them being that this is so far the only opportunity to read part of the Portuguese-language novel in English translation. Jaffe’s narrator, Írisz, has fled to Brazil from Hungary […]
...moreMiroslav Penkov discusses his debut novel, Stork Mountain, Balkan history, and the difficulties and rewards of being a bilingual writer.
...moreThe grief story: it’s sympathetic, moving, and even cathartic when done well. It’s also a trap for clichés, overwrought metaphors, sticky sentimentality, and hyperbole. Add that to the ubiquity of the grief story, and you get a subject that can be damn tricky to write well. Some writers may spend hours coming up with new […]
...moreHow did we come to place our faith in a symbol that is so ephemeral—all vapor and crystal? The New Yorker explores how the metaphor of “the cloud” is shaping how we experience the Internet.
...moreIt’s a literal confrontation of his metaphorical fear, a visual take on Rilke’s words: to view Güeros is to see a “thing poem” on the screen, to witness something like “The Panther” materialize.
...moreThere are countless metaphors for love: a rose, a flame, a garden, a loaded gun, a battlefield. We’ve heard them all—or so we thought. This week at Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Joyland editor Lisa Locascio recommended Amelia Gray’s story, “The Swan as Metaphor for Love.” The title sounds lovely, evoking peaceful lakes and graceful swan […]
...moreWhy do we refer to our minds in terms of seas and cartography, anyway? Find out by consulting your sextant and the first online metaphor map. The chart boasts over 14,000 metaphorical connections, sourced from 4,000,000 lexical data points by a few Scottish researchers who now (presumably) have some excellent new phrases for spinning yarns […]
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