We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in essays and criticism.
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Posted inFiction, Story
Cities I’ve Never Lived In: A Story By Sara Majka
“These stories are a marvel and will break your heart.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
The Dreamy, Sensual, and Bizarre Folk Tales of Yoko Tawada
Yoko Tawada’s English-language publisher, New Directions, describes her slender book The Bridegroom Was a Dog in simple and straightforward terms: “A bizarre tale of passion and romance between a schoolteacher and a dog.” There is, of course, complexity to this tight and colorful novella (written in 1993, and translated from Japanese in 1998), in which the life of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
How They Disappeared: A Reading List
This week, I wanted to share five more stories about what it means to disappear—either against your will or by your own volition.
Posted inFiction, Quotes
The Enduring Allure of ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’
Halloween is mere weeks away—what better time to revisit Alvin Schwartz’s ‘Scary Stories’?
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
A Book in the Mail is the Cure For Ferrante Fever
As a regular book browser, or shelf stalker, and former employee of Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, I’ve recently watched several customers come in asking for recommendations of what to read next after finishing Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s four-volume saga, The Neapolitan Quartet — a masterwork concerning issues of class, status, and the remarkable complexity of […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Feature, Nonfiction
How David Bowie Came Out As Gay (And What He Meant By It)
David Bowie came out as gay in an interview with Melody Maker magazine in 1972, and it was the closet door heard ’round the world. But what did he mean by it?
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
This Better and Truer History
On memory, therapy, and cats in the dryer: A discussion with J.M. Coetzee
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Little Government in the Big Woods
Melissa Gilbert’s lost bid for Congress and the forgotten political history of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
‘Don’t You Write Anything Happy?’: Chinelo Okparanta on Learning from Public Readings
Once, I did a reading in New York where an older lady came up to me afterwards and said, “Your writing is beautiful, and there’s no doubt you’re a great writer, but I’m sorry I won’t be reading any more of that story. That was just too painful for me.” Then, a year or two […]
