The Driest Season by Meghan Kenny
Falling into this book and living completely in its world for a day or two may be just the right way to read it.
Blog
Out with T.S. Eliot, and In with Cathy Park Hong: Poetry Criticism in the 21st Century
The debate about whether Rupi Kaur’s poetry (and by extension, the whole genre dubbed “instapoetry”) is good or bad has apparently been revived. Whether that debate is actually useful in the terms it has set out for itself remains to be seen. Most often, it seems, when the poet in question is a young woman…
Toxic Friends and the Limits of Intimacy in Lauren Groff’s “Blythe”
By providing characterizations that transcend the limits of traditional intimacy Groff creates a spectrum of dysfunction. Without boundaries, love becomes poisonous. Its removal is painful.
This is What Matters: A Conversation with Danielle Lazarin
I knew Danielle Lazarin on Twitter as a sharp, funny commentator on life as a woman, as a native New Yorker, as a writer, and I thought if she could sustain that voice in her fiction, then her forthcoming collection of short stories would be a glimmering jewel. Turns out she could, and it is.
Time and Narrative Structure in Gina Berriault’s “The Infinite Passion of Expectation”
The first time I read Gina Berriault’s story “The Infinite Passion of Expectation,” I experienced it as an inundation. The plot is strange but simple: a young waitress goes on frequent walks with an eccentric, aging psychologist, who eventually asks her to marry him—she’s unsure. The psychologist lives an unconventional life; he shares his house…
Cultural Legibility in America’s Dark Chapter
What does it mean to be culturally legible? And what does cultural legibility mean with regard to writing about or from within one’s own culture?
Imagine Wanting Only This and the Subjectivity of Memoir
Beginning with her childhood in Wisconsin and threading through her years in Chicago, Iowa, Kentucky, and numerous cities abroad, Kristen Radtke’s 2017 graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This chronicles her enduring obsession with ruins and the significance people find in them. Instigated by the premature death of her uncle, Radtke contrasts these “scooped-out places,” abandoned…
Effects of the Edge
In Aldo Leopold’s Game Management, published in 1933, he pointed out the overlapping zones between biomes and coined the term “edge effect.” All my life I had lived in those two ecosystems: that of the family I was adopted into, and that of my family of origin.
Feel Free by Zadie Smith
Feel Free is an excellent place to find one of the best contemporary writers writing at her best.