For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] When asked who he writes for in a recent interview, Brontez Purnell provided as good an answer as I’ve heard in years: “Ghosts” he said. And then, elaborating on his answer: “A bunch of disruptive faggots.” In his latest offering—100 Boyfriends—the two aren’t mutually exclusive. The narrator’s boyfriends are the book’s ghosts and its … Read more
[ad_1] It’s always cold this time of year, but when Megan Stielstra’s first two books quietly became available for pre-orders early in January, it got cool. Previously out of print, Stielstra’s collections Everyone Remain Calm and Once I Was Cool will now have a new home with Northwestern University Press this August. Both books are … Read more
[ad_1] Kink, edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, is a titillating collection of stories about sex, fetish, love, and loneliness from a diverse group of literary authors. Although the collection includes detailed descriptions of sex acts, Kink is primarily an exploration of intimacy, power, and our human need to share an emotional bond. Communication is a … Read more
[ad_1] In the final story of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s new collection, a soldier in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment expounds a “taxonomy of anger” that grapples with the layers and species of anger living in his fellow Black soldiers, newly and incompletely freed. It’s one of many thorny recurring problems in Reconstruction, a stylistically diverse collection … Read more
[ad_1] A loner on the run is a Western literary genre trope, but Toronto poet and novelist Gil Adamson transforms it wholly in Ridgerunner, the follow-up to her debut novel, The Outlander. While the first book is a character study of nineteen-year-old Mary Boulton, a woman on the run from her brothers-in-law after she murders … Read more
[ad_1] In Cass Sunstein’s book This is Not Normal, he observes that “…the success of President Trump has made many people fear that a president, with his current powers, might have the ability to undermine the foundations of a democratic order, above all by altering the understanding of what counts as normal.” Um, yes. I … Read more
[ad_1] Reading about Ida B. Wells is like reading a biography of activism itself, of a whole flock of lives lived. Born into enslavement in Mississippi in 1862, Wells died in 1931, a year after running for the Illinois State Senate. In between, she became, at sixteen, the primary caregiver to five younger siblings after … Read more
[ad_1] Since the onset of the global pandemic, there’s certainly no shortage of virtual literary programming, but I’m happy to share a few upcoming events I’ve had a hand in creating that are geared toward writers of color. For writers of color who have created work but are unsure how or where to send it, … Read more
[ad_1] Heat is the operative word in the title of Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut collection, Milk Blood Heat, because these stories are fire. There is the Florida heat, certainly, as most of the stories are set in Jacksonville and the surrounding area, but there is more to it than mere setting. In this case, the … Read more
[ad_1] Burning Worlds is Amy Brady’s monthly column dedicated to examining how contemporary literature interrogates issues of climate change, in partnership with Yale Climate Connections. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter to get “Burning Worlds” and other writing about art and climate change delivered straight to your inbox. Julie Carrick Dalton’s debut novel, Waiting for the Night Song, hums with … Read more