For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The annual cross-cultural, bilingual literature and arts festival Lit & Luz is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year! Since the launch of the festival ten years ago by MAKE Literary Productions, Lit & Luz has brought together dozens of artists and writers between Mexico and the United States into conversation with one another, producing … Read more
[ad_1] Chicago was a tinderbox. In 1871, the city was packed with wood-frame houses, wooden sidewalks, and hay-filled barns, nestled alongside lumber processing mills, paper factories, wood-frame churches, and saloons. Thirty-four years since its municipal incorporation, Chicago was now home to over 300,000 people, roughly half of them immigrants who journeyed to the city seeking … Read more
[ad_1] Margo Steines knows something about pain. At seventeen, while growing up in New York City, she became a dominatrix, her first-ever job. She was a sex worker for a decade, later running her own S/M dungeon—kicking, punching, and otherwise assaulting consenting, paying adult males for a living. She developed a romantic—albeit increasingly tumultuous and … Read more
[ad_1] “What’s the point of going home if nobody is there?” Agata Izabela Brewer asks in the opening pages of her memoir, The Hunger Book: A Memoir from Communist Poland. She’s narrating a dream of dreadful abandonment, in which she holds hands with her brother, mushroom hunting while her family disappears behind them leaving them … Read more
[ad_1] Commenting on a social media post of a Time article titled “The Ukraine War Is Becoming Putin’s Vietnam,” author Viet Thanh Nguyen says, “It was only a matter of time . . . the return of Vietnam as a war, not a country. When the reality is that if any country deserves to be … Read more
[ad_1] In 2019, C. Pam Zhang enchanted readers with her vision of the American Gold Rush in How Much Of These Hills is Gold, her words rendering that dusty, bleak landscape with the fresh perspective of children. This narrative of children transporting their father’s body recalls Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, but Zhang’s story is … Read more
[ad_1] Eliza Clark’s thoughtful follow-up to her debut novel Boy Parts gives readers the opportunity to examine true crime from unexpected angles. Once-celebrated (fictional) journalist Alec Z. Carelli takes a shot at redemption after penning two commercial flops and being implicated in a scandal that hurls him out of public favor. While scouring the internet … Read more
[ad_1] My first encounter with Elle Nash’s work was Animals Eat Each Other, and since then I’ve been hooked. Her short story collection, Nudes, broke my heart in the best way, and Gag Reflex (written in the style of a LiveJournal from 2005) delivers measured doses of eating disorder vulnerability amid tenuous teenage social structures. … Read more
[ad_1] By the time October rolls around, it’s no secret what we’re looking forward to. With the turn of the season and the falling leaves comes plenty of opportunities for cozy blankets, a warm cup of tea, and a book that will scare you into sleeping with all the lights off. Okay, so maybe horror … Read more
[ad_1] “Go back to Beatrice, the real Beatrice,” urges Beatriz, a graceful yet unassuming forty-something patron of the Sala Mampou concert hall who lives with her husband and son in Barcelona. “What was it that made Dante choose her over all other women? Or go back to Mary. What was it about Mary full of … Read more