For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] We all have a story we tell about our lives. There is a certain power we harness in storytelling that lets us be whoever we want to be. But perhaps the telling becomes most powerful when we can speak truthfully, when we can come to terms with reality. In Laura Adamczyk’s debut novel, Island … Read more
[ad_1] Royalty is an enduring topic in popular culture, from beloved animated princesses to historical monarchs and their tourist-inviting palaces. Many films, television shows, and books have imagined the life of the ruling class from their point of view, but Jac Jemc’s latest novel, Empty Theatre: Or the Lives of King Ludwig II of Bavaria … Read more
[ad_1] My Last Innocent Year, Daisy Alpert Florin’s debut novel, takes place nearly twenty years before the #MeToo movement took off. Isabel Rosen, at the onset of her last semester at Wilder College, has finally begun to feel like she belongs at the prestigious institution―until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with Zev, someone she considered a … Read more
[ad_1] “I dreamed of writing love letters to the homies,” José Olivarez tells the reader in the author’s note to Promises of Gold, his multilayered and much-anticipated second collection of poetry, which can be read in English and in Spanish translation. Seeing a bilingual edition of contemporary poetry from a major American publisher is rare, … Read more
[ad_1] How many of us appreciate the miracle that is our breath? Appreciate our bodies—our whole bodies, including our curves, our folds, our very flesh? What do breath, the body, and our feelings about both, have to do with writing anyway? If you were to ask Gayle Brandeis what breath and the body have to … 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] While I was reading Marisa Crane’s elegant debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, I thought a lot about how much of ourselves we hide from other people. In Marisa’s speculative near future, punishment is a constant public spectacle, surveillance is everywhere, and those deemed wrongdoers by a totalitarian U.S. government are given … Read more
[ad_1] I first met Fatin Abbas in 7th grade French class—September 1993, New York City. Although we were both new to the school, our places of origin were 6,000 miles apart. At the time I didn’t know what had brought her to the United States from Sudan, that her family had fled political persecution following … Read more
[ad_1] We often pigeonhole people and their abilities: you’re a writer or an editor, a poet or a novelist, creative or strategic. My (admittedly anecdotal) experience suggests that such binaries are a fallacy, and Jill Bialosky is a distinctive example of how one can successfully juggle “all of the above.” As Executive Editor of W.W. … Read more