For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Leslie Jamison’s Empathy Exams came to me nestled amidst a pile of Little Debbie’s Fudge Rounds—gifts my friends had chosen to soothe the pain of my recent miscarriage. I had no expectations of Jamison when I left my first chocolate smudges on the covers of her debut essay collection. My lack of preparation made … Read more
[ad_1] When I started reading GennaRose Nethercott’s short story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: and Other Stories, I was struck by the evocative description that these stories were about “the abomination that resides within us all.” Nethercott’s characters yearn for something missing in their lives, often love—but also a purpose, an answer, or … Read more
[ad_1] When I started reading GennaRose Nethercott’s short story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: and Other Stories, I was struck by the evocative description that these stories were about “the abomination that resides within us all.” Nethercott’s characters yearn for something missing in their lives, often love—but also a purpose, an answer, or … Read more
[ad_1] On the way home from work, Dunia Ahmed is attacked and nearly flung to her death onto New York City subway tracks. When strangers manage to rescue her, the man who would have been her murderer ends his own life instead. The mystery of why someone Dunia had never met wanted her dead takes … Read more
[ad_1] Very early in my spiritual education, I was taught by my elders to be cautious about making claims. One reason for this caution—particularly when it comes to making claims about oneself—is that claims are often rooted in the ego. They betray the fact that so much of what we claim about ourselves can be … Read more
[ad_1] You never can tell where life will take you. When I met Beth Uznis Johnson at an MFA alumni event for Queens University of Charlotte, she lived in Michigan, and I lived in Chicago. Who’d have guessed that a decade later, she’d live a few blocks from me, and we’d meet for Monday writing … Read more
[ad_1] Ani Gjika’s An Unruled Body follows the author from the turbulent final years of Albanian communism through an era of transition and on to a somewhat fated path to Boston—as a matter of fact, it is her “grandmother’s faith that gets [her] family to the U.S.” In this memoir, the passage from girlhood to … Read more
[ad_1] Sadie and Alice have been best friends since high school and now live on opposite ends of California. When budding actress Alice comes back to the Bay Area to perform in a basement-theater production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, she expects reliable Sadie to attend opening night. But her friend has special plans of … Read more
[ad_1] Gabriel Bump has always exuded hopefulness in his writing. The young narrator of his debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong quickly became a classic voice in Chicago literature, echoing a sense of dazzling and at times unrealized optimism about his community, reminiscent of writers like Sandra Cisneros and Stuart Dybek. But even if home … Read more
[ad_1] Rejection letter erasure poems recently took over literary Twitter/X. Writers scribble over rejection letters they’ve received, omitting words and phrases until another message emerges. That message is often brutally funny, as if a barefaced NO lay submerged beneath the carefully crafted letter all along. But these erasure poems do more than give writers a … Read more