Literature
A public cafeteria, the ghost of my heart gorges herself on spent ammunition // The Orlando medical examiner processed each of the 49 Pulse victims apart from the gunman. / Even amid gravitational collapse, surviving atoms couldn’t reanimate with him.
The Man Booker finalist on telling a story from the perspective of a spirit and writing to expose historical truths.
On Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them, a witty and subversive novel about life in a fourteenth century convent.
The writer and musician on queer representation, empathy for our younger selves, and music for our feelings.
The poet on her reimagined version of Vyasa’s Mahabharata and the human cost of war.
On writing for the sound of it, scandalous joy, and the seriousness of scatterbrained expression.
On writing about cancer and healing under the looming specter of Berlin’s history.
The writer on creating a legend about her mother, breaking the fourth wall, and Elena Ferrante’s honesty.
On the occasion of a new co-edition of Je Nathanaël, the author speaks about re-issues, the lie of the truth, and the limits of language.
Poetry with an epic sweep.
The author on her latest novel about family secrets, New Orleans, and characters waiting for their stories to be told.
On her new collection of nonfiction, Me & Other Writings.
The boy who is coming home with part of himself missing is the man’s nephew. The man, Silas, receives the news and hangs up the phone, numb. He wants a drink. He doesn’t want a drink. He wants time to move backward.
The poet, translator, and Action Books publisher on his collection of essays about US literary culture, foreign influence, and the illusion of mastery.
we consummated our marriage / on a bed littered with sour faces / of dead presidents, liberated livestock / sweating through the dollars.
The writer on the tradition of notebook writers, archiving his own work, and enjoying a ragged, damaged, nervous narration.
She was coming out of the library when she saw him. Their paths had crossed a couple of times before. Three, to be exact. More or less under the same circumstances. He was riding an orange bicycle, and a little girl was standing behind him on the pannier rack.
The writer on releasing her debut story collection, writing as a woman of color, and balancing a medical career with the writer’s life.
A medium for conversations about deep time, how war affects our consciousness, literature and, of course, nothing.
The writer and activist filmmaker on completing the trilogy comprised of Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not, and This Mournable Body—narratives of women’s strength in the face of injustice.
