How to write that Russian novel you’ve been putting off.
“I’m Obviously Quite Unpleasant”
By Jennifer Ruth
The four interviews collected here have appeared before, but read together they deliver a strong impression of the who of Arendt. We know the what already. At least we think we do.
Art and Social Practice
By Alex Behr
“For this project, which is ongoing, I spend a long time with the people that I’m working with, all their stories, because I’m not interested in telling my version of their story. The goal is to do the best job I possibly can of being a vehicle to people to tell their story.” Wendy MacNaughton’s Meanwhile in San Francisco documents insular pockets: the mah jongg players in Chinatown, the regulars at the main branch of the public library, the swimmers at the Dolphin Club, and the single-room occupancy folks of 6th Street.
Ta-Nehisi Coates Writes His Way into American History
By Dan DeWeese
Among all of the cable television arguments, newspaper columns, social media memes, and political soundbites that attempt to supply explanations for how American culture has arrived at the place it is, We Were Eight Years in Power is what future readers will most likely look back on as the best entry in the new genre of How We Got Here.
To Seth, On His Tenth Birthday
By Benjamin Craig
"I know your mom doesn’t take the family out of the magnetic field because of the radiation problems out here in space, but you should try to get her to reconsider."
Hell Yes There is Intrigue and Legal Action in the Field of Calculatedly Generic Lantern Festivals
By Pete Tothero
Competing urban lantern festival companies are involved in litigation over who invented lantern festivals, which are not a thing.
Writing the Self as Other
By Sarah Kruse
As the narrator of The Book of Disquiet exclaims in a passage (#193) in the Zenith translation, “I end up more in the images than in me, stating myself until I no longer exist, writing with my soul until I no longer exist, writing with my soul for ink, useful for nothing except writing.”
Two Thousand, Five Hundred and Two Books to Read or Die Trying
By Matthew Hein
Those who harbor guilt over incomplete assignments from their formal educations—Frankenstein, Our Mutual Friend, Dante’s Paradiso—hardly need new assignments. But Mustich’s book, pleasingly designed by Janet Vicario, offers something special: pretty pictures. They’re well-chosen: sexy author portraits, cool first-edition covers, and pages of hand-corrected drafts.
Matthew Robinson Discusses The Horse Latitudes at Fiction Writers Review
In a Memorial Day post at Fiction Writers Review, Propeller Books author Matthew Robinson discusses (with Propeller contributing editor Thea Prieto) the challenge of writing about war.
Essentially Prisoners
By Sarah DeYoreo
On the morning of May 28, Sarah DeYoreo sent the following email to the 500-plus employees of Morrison Child & Family Services, where DeYoreo worked as a “milieu counselor” with unaccompanied immigrant children in Portland, Oregon.
Does a priest like God?
By Daneen Bergland & Wendy Bourgeois
A conversation about poetry, philosophy, the role of autobiography in criticism, and Wendy Bourgeois’s essay collection, The Devil Says Maybe I Like It.
How to Shoe a Horse
By Jeanette Rawlins
This process is easiest if you keep your hoof knife razor sharp. But use caution. It’s easy to accidentally slip and cut yourself while working.
Moments of Discovery
By Mary Rechner
Debra Gwartney talks about structure and self-awareness in her new memoir, I am a Stranger Here Myself.
Beyond Fixed Boundaries
By Catherine Johnson
Inheritance is less about what we inherit genetically and more about how stories of family lineage not only shape notions of identity and what it means to know oneself, but the stability of that identity and knowledge.
Film It Slant
By Dan DeWeese
No man appears heroic in a Dutch angle.
Album Bracketology, Part Five: Winners
By Matthew Kauffman Smith
The double elimination album tournament published without editorial oversight names a champion.
Allegorical and Absolutely Human
By Thea Prieto
Megan Hunter’s debut novel, The End We Start From (Grove Atlantic, 2017), is a lyrical vision of new motherhood in the midst of environmental fallout.
Album Bracketology, Part Four: The Final Four
By Matthew Kauffman Smith
The double elimination album tournament resumes, with little to no editorial oversight.
In Praise of Ordinary Art
By Matt Hartman
If the essential challenge of criticism is to get others to see what you see in an object, the challenge today is to resist the critical landscape that shapes how we approach art in the first place.
Lookbook: Battle, Judgment, Goodbye
By Tevis Eurythmic
Renaissance painting and Damian Lillard.