The Effluvia of Short Fiction
By utilizing various forms of “effluvia” in their work, Amelia Gray, Alexandra Kleeman, and Helen Oyeyemi give us greater insight into the human condition. They show us why shit matters.
Critical Essays
The Reckless Romanticism of Mary Wollstonecraft
The collected letters Mary Wollstonecraft wrote to Gilbert Imlay from 1791 to 1795 are not as widely read as her political and travel writings. Still, they offer precious glimpses of a lively, intellectual eighteenth-century woman in the midst of heartbreak, pregnancy, motherhood, and a blooming writing career.
Trump Appoints Former Lit Mag Editor to Top Post
President Trump appointed Jon Parrish Peede as the acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Peede’s appointment comes at a time of heightened tension between the arts community and the Trump administration.
Black Voices on the Civil War
Charlottesville has me thinking about poems of the Civil War that center black experiences. Poems from the Civil War canon are usually heavy on Whitman, Dickinson, or folk songs. The following three texts should satisfy anyone who wants to read beyond “O Captain, My Captain.”
Louise Erdrich’s Literary Children
Louise Erdrich’s most recent triptych of novels—The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012), and LaRose (2016)—all feature children more prominently than adults. Children are confronted with a many-layered moral question that their experiences over the course of the novel will help them to process.
The Language From the Far Places: Experiences of Mental Illness in Literature
How can one adequately capture experiences that very often undo language itself, that are often so profoundly isolating precisely because they defy our common speech, our tested vocabularies and definitions of human experience? How do we find the right words to map that place?
Metaphor’s (Nearly) Infinite Wellspring
Birds are not alone in singing or in originating metaphors. There are other winged creatures that croon and hum and carry. We are among multitudes that raise a chorus to the elements, especially in August. Cicadas, yes, but also crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers.
Writing as Mourning in Kate Zambreno’s Book of Mutter
In Book of Mutter, Zambreno writes, “It is something ineffable about my mother that I search for.” This search, conducted over the thirteen years since Zambreno’s mother’s death, manifests in a fusion of memoir, essay, and meditation, and suggests how writing might embody the lifelong process of mourning a parent.
Scattered to the Wind: Three Novels on Migration from the Middle East and North Africa
Three debut novels shed light on migration from the Middle East and North Africa, taking up themes of displacement, longing for home, and the split narratives of a life “before” and “after.”