For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In 2012, as President Barack Obama publicly announced his support for same-sex marriage and effectively paved the way for marriage equality, Carmen Maria Machado was freeing herself from an abusive girlfriend. Machado once fantasized about marrying her and starting a family. Yet it’s this dangerous lover who stalks the chambers of Machado’s heart in … Read more
[ad_1] November is here, along with falling leaves, whipping winds, and the possibility of other, more dramatic weather patterns—all of which are related to climate change, the urgency of which you can read about in Greta Thunberg’s newly collected speeches, featured as one of our favorites of the month. But wait, there’s more! We’ve got … Read more
[ad_1] The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead was Read It Forward’s book club pick of October and it really sparked a lot of discussion. The brave, eye-opening novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim … Read more
[ad_1] Jac Jemc, author of the story collection False Bingo from MCD x FSG, was a writer from the start. She told her third-grade teacher her goal was to write a one-hundred page story; a goal she’s now surpassed many times over. While Jemc is most known for her speculative and horror work, due in … Read more
[ad_1] My approach to reading is a lot like my appetite for sex. Sometimes I want it quick, hot, and dirty, which is when I’ll read a shorter novel that I can finish in an afternoon. Then there are the other times when I want the lovemaking that goes on all night and is in … Read more
[ad_1] Security through physicality. Security through redundancy. Security through obscurity. How do immortal artificial intelligences defend themselves? With an air gap. With a security force that has no connection to anything that can harm them. With a young woman, trained to fight and to die who, along with her cohort must keep them safe. But … Read more
[ad_1] Helen Phillips is a widely celebrated author of speculative fiction. Her new novel, The Need, published in July by Simon & Schuster, was recently long-listed for the National Book Award. The stories from her previous book, Some Possible Solutions, combine elements of science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, and surrealism. Curious about her writing process, … Read more
[ad_1] The trouble with language is language. It’s so inherent to who we are that we submit early on to its autocracy. In order to comprehend the murmuring of our parents, the customs of our tribes, cultural currencies of our communities, not to mention the laws of our societies, we commit to memory the structure … Read more
[ad_1] In her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton was praised for her nuanced portrayal of intergenerational relationships between strong female black characters. In her much anticipated second novel, The Revisioners, Sexton returns with a lyrical family saga that traces multiple generations from the antebellum South (on the brink of the Civil … Read more
[ad_1] An act of compassion puts a trapeze master in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power. I am not a fighter. I am a trapeze master. At the Majestic Oriental Circus, which had been my home for two years, I had climbed the ropes deft and fast, till I … Read more