This Week in Books: An Everlasting Meal By Dana Snitzky Commentary The book that’s been the most help to me during lockdown is a book I’ve never read.
‘I Want Every Sentence To Be Doing Work’: An Interview with Miranda Popkey By Zan Romanoff Feature “Something I did learn writing this book is that being impressed by something doesn’t mean you should try and do it.”
Sit Back, Relax, and Try Not To Think About the Hole We’re Making In Your Skull By Michelle Weber Highlight You can understand how the dura mater connects to the arachnoid mater, but that doesn’t mean you understand the mind.
N.K. Jemisin: ‘I am still going to write what I am going to write.’ By Krista Stevens Highlight Hells to the yes, says I.
10 Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2020 By Longreads Feature Stories by Edwidge Danticat, Etgar Keret, Valeria Luiselli, and more.
‘By Choice, and Not By Choice…Time Is Going To Change You.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Nina MacLaughlin discusses her retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “[In] my very vague high school memories…there was no discussion of the fact that this book is just rape after rape after rape.”
‘I’m a Big Fan of Writing To Find Out What You Don’t Know.’ By Adam Morgan Feature Mark Haber discusses “Reinhardt’s Garden” and its protagonist’s quest for a true understanding of melancholy: “not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade, not depression but not happiness either…”
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
‘Writing This Book Was a Weird Séance ’: An Interview With Deborah Levy By Tobias Carroll Feature “If you have the depth, the surface can be as light as it’s possible to make it…I don’t mind that ‘Swimming Home’ is sometimes described as a ‘beach read’ — actually that’s a triumph.”
“We’re All Still Cooking…Still Raw at the Core”: An Interview with Jacqueline Woodson By Adam Morgan Feature “When I look at that dress and how much intention went into the making of it…it’s like we want to have something that can’t be destroyed, because so much of the past has been destroyed…”
‘To Be Polite By Ignoring the Obvious’: Jess Row on Unpacking Whiteness in Literature By Morgan Jerkins Feature “I was looking for texts that seem to go the extra mile in hiding something — texts that almost seem to be begging to be interpreted in terms of what’s not being said.”
The Migrant in the Mirror By Morgan Jerkins Feature In recent novels, Ocean Vuong and Nicole Dennis-Benn tell stories in which young queer characters affected by migration and displacement are worthy of seeing themselves reflected in others.
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
‘Nobody in This Book Is Going to Catch a Break’: Téa Obreht on “Inland” By Ryan Chapman Feature ‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
Memories Dressed Up With Wishes By Grace Linden Feature Siri Hustvedt’s “Memories of the Future” is a fitting book for the #MeToo moment, which is as much about justice and reparations as it is about understanding the logic of memory.
‘If an Animal Talks, I’m Sold’: An Interview with Ann and Jeff Vandermeer By Alan Scherstuhl Feature Ann and Jeff Vandermeer discuss talking animals, the weird/fantasy divide, and the ‘rate of fey’ as an organizing principle in their new anthology of classic fantasy.
Time To Kill the Rabbit? By Lily Meyer Feature In two new novels, the bunnies are anything but cute. (Unless … you use magic to turn one of them into a pre-TB Keats, or a talky Tim Riggins.)
Kristen Arnett on Taxidermy, Memory, and “Mostly Dead Things” By Tobias Carroll Feature “What’s considered high art? What’s lowbrow? What are those things? That’s something that, as a person who like, lives at 7-Eleven, I’m extremely interested in.”
America Is Still Hard To Find By Lily Meyer Feature Kathleen Alcott’s latest novel is a dramatic reenactment of the ethical dilemmas posed in antiwar activist Father Daniel Berrigan’s ’60s manifesto.
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me By Christine Ro Feature “Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
‘The Home Is a Place as Wild as Any in the World.’ By Alex Madison Feature Chia-Chia Lin talks about the wildness of domestic spaces and writing her novel “The Unpassing” through the early months of motherhood.
The Women Characters Rarely End Up Free: Remembering Rachel Ingalls By Ruby Brunton Feature The recently re-appreciated novelist Rachel Ingalls passed away last month. She was among a cohort of twentieth-century women writers who were ‘famous for not being famous.’
Lock Your Doors? By Ryan Chapman Feature A new homeowner reads two novels that revolve around surreal home-invasion scenarios, and considers what it is about his house that scares him.
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’ By Amy Brady Feature Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.
‘I’m Always Writing Against This Idea That Denver’s a White Space.’ By Adam Morgan Feature Kali Fajardo-Anstine talks about her new short story collection “Sabrina & Corina,” her obsession with dualities, and Chicano and Indigenous history in Denver.
‘Craft Is My Belief System. My Obligation To Writing Is Religious.’ By Lily Meyer Feature Nathan Englander talks about the “super-American world” of Orthodox Judaism, Philip Roth’s funeral, and training himself to write his new novel “kaddish.com” while daydreaming.
Namwali Serpell on Doing the Responsible Thing — Writing an Irresponsible Novel By Tobias Carroll Feature “I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
Irvine Welsh on Brexit, Existential Panic, and His Latest ‘Trainspotting’ Sequel By Tobias Carroll Feature “The books from ‘Trainspotting’ onwards have been about deindustrialization … the cruel existential panic that we feel, in the sense that we don’t really know what we’re here for anymore.”
Navigation By Longreads Feature “The whiteboy said there was nothing left for me in Houston, he said that I didn’t have to punish myself, and he said my name, my actual name.”
If Only There Were Someone Who Would Listen By JW McCormack Feature Dror Burstein’s “Muck” sets a difficult course through themes of power, pita bread, and invasion, mixing up the biblical past and the just-as-lamentable present.
