Ryan Chapman

The Zambian novelist on using tropes to upend them, the power of mistakes, writing female desire, and more.

What kind of novel would you write if you had never read a novel before? Would it have the mounting tension of a campfire tale? The breathless cadence of fresh gossip shared with a best friend? If you’re Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug, you unspool 50,000 words with the inventiveness of Scheherazade and the guilelessness of a Red Bull–fueled, hyperarticulate ten-year-old. This is Wait, Blink.

A new collection of criticism and reportage considers Trump, Bellow, and the pleasures of close reading.

Featuring selections by Justin Taylor, Shelly Oria, Mary Walling Blackburn, Kevin Killian, Barry Schwabsky, John Freeman, and more.

Paint and plenty of fauna in a Dutchess County barn

Art and exchange in extraterritorial territories

“I’m glad that the work is still proving elusive enough to resist attempts to gather it all up in a critical hamper or net.”

“Post-love, post-work, post-faith, post-home. What’s left?”

César Aira’s first story collection to appear in the US follows the publication of ten short novels in nine years, all from New Directions.

Selections by Kate Valk, Andrew Lampert, Tan Lin, Mary-Ann Monforton, and Ryan Chapman.