For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Lisa Cupolo’s debut book, Have Mercy on Us, won the W.S. Porter Prize for short story collections. The ten stories are a rich exploration of people continually seeking, wrestling, and walking the line of great tension in their relation to others, and also within themselves. There is an abiding sense of hope and mystery as … Read more
[ad_1] When Martin Riker’s novel The Guest Lecture opens, its main character, Abby, is lying awake in a hotel bed, trying not to wake her husband and daughter, anxiously planning a lecture on the economist John Maynard Keynes that she’s scheduled to give the next day. When the novel ends, Abby is lying awake in … Read more
[ad_1] Reworking, adaptation, reconsideration. There is always an appeal to mining the Ancient Greek poets for a timely retelling. Most recently—with the likes of Madeleine Miller’s Circe and Pat Barker’s two Trojan novels, The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy—there has been an interest in shifting the balance by gifting the often … Read more
[ad_1] Already a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, as well as a co-host of The Poet Salon podcast, it’s hard to believe that Judas Goat is Gabrielle Bates’s debut collection. The two-score poems within display a sensitive and assured voice and a candid exploration of human relationships and the … Read more
[ad_1] I’d like to ask Kevin Maloney if he’s familiar with “Return of the Grievous Angel,” the Gram Parsons’ song with themes of wandering, life on the road, and a kind of longing that leads to an inevitable return. I kept hearing this song in my head as I read Maloney’s novel The Red-Headed Pilgrim, … Read more
[ad_1] Everyone has those moments in their lives that didn’t turn out the way they thought they might. Whether by making the wrong choice or saying the wrong thing or being impacted by chance, time and the world continue to move further and further from that moment, and the human life impacted at that exact … Read more
[ad_1] With the publication of her first memoir, Burn the Place, Michelin-starred chef Iliana Regan carved a space for herself between the culinary world and the literary world. She was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award, the first food writer recognized since Julia Child. The New Yorker distinguished Burn the Place as one of “the great memoirs of addiction, … Read more
[ad_1] No book has influenced how I approach book reviews more than Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses. The book challenges the lens many readers use, one shaped by white, Western values, and is a call not only to make space for diverse storytelling, but to evaluate it on its own terms. And, … Read more
[ad_1] A man is offered the opportunity to partake in an exclusive, subscription-based eating club for those who wish to dine on human flesh. But he may have bitten off a little more than he can chew. Salutations, friend! Apologies for waiting on your doorstep, but you weren’t in when I first called, … Read more
[ad_1] The threat posed by technocratic fascism has played out in real time on the timelines of social media users in recent months. Whether we’re sharing words or videos or memes or embarrassing grade school yearbook photos, we’ve ceded enormous power to too few gatekeepers. The rapid changes in technology has meant our cultural critique … Read more