For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In the summer of 2007, a short story by a young Korean-American writer named David Hoon Kim appeared in the pages of The New Yorker. It was Kim’s first published work of fiction. This auspicious beginning is normally the stuff of literary legend, about as straight-line a course for a book deal as a … Read more
[ad_1] We have made it to what they call the “dog days” of summer, when temperatures typically reach their enervating—though it’s a little hard to believe it can get much hotter. For those of us still in school, a return to the classroom, whether virtually or in person, looms on the horizon. Vacations are starting … Read more
[ad_1] A common refrain in the teaching of the craft of writing, to whatever extent that can in fact be done, is that one’s form and content, story and structure, should each be sculpted with the other in mind, a sort of mechanical drinking bird for the art of fiction, where the pressures of one … Read more
[ad_1] Rodrigo García lost his mother, Mercedes Barcha Pardo, in August of 2020. Like so many others, he was kept from her bedside by COVID-19 travel restrictions. In A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir, he writes: “Unable to travel, I saw her alive for the last time on the cracked screen of … Read more
[ad_1] In his latest release, MPH and Other Road Poems, Ed Roberson recounts a motorcycle trip across the United States with two friends in 1970. This journey is taken through the poet’s return to a recovered manuscript previously written in that time, analogous to his own life’s ongoing journey through the Americas’ extended geographies. In … Read more
[ad_1] Who do stories belong to? Some would say a story belongs to the author who wrote it, and copyright law would back up that interpretation, at least for the first 75 years after publication. In the case of a story based on a person from history or myth, the discussion broadens: is ownership even … Read more
[ad_1] Katie Kitamura’s fourth novel, Intimacies, is deeply concerned with place. At lunch with her boss, our unnamed protagonist is asked, “Where is your family,” meaning, where do you belong? It’s a question that comes up more than once, and one the protagonist can’t answer. She’s stuck between cultures, between languages, between moral positions; even … Read more
[ad_1] Recently I got coffee with a friend and we fell, as one does these days, to talking about the awkward process of socializing again in the post-pandemic world. “I feel like I’m emerging from a cave with these weird new habits I have to explain,” she said. I compared myself, not entirely ironically, to … Read more
[ad_1] The defining element of slasher film franchises of the ‘80s and ‘90s was the “final girl.” The one who runs for her life as a serial killer cuts down her friends one by one just behind her. The final girl is plucky and resourceful. She runs from the monster until backed into a climactic … Read more
[ad_1] “My name is Tetley Abednego, and I am the most hated girl in Garbagetown.” From this very first sentence of The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente, Valente ensures her readers know where Tetley stands. Tetley knows too, but it doesn’t bother her. “Everyone says they only hate me because I annihilated hope … Read more