Full Stop

Garcia upends the distinction between diurnal intellection and nocturnal visions and free-association.

This is the experience of waiting: wanting to be doing something but knowing it won’t mean anything—the meaning is what we’re waiting for.

Building an audible nest for intensifying, as a bird might shed drab feathers for bright ones in a time of courtship, an ordinary song for a mating call, my sonic ornament was a customized flush of puberty, a condensed libidinal vehemence.

Horror is not a numbing agent, but a proposal, an opportunity to meditate upon the method and medium of fear.

Garcia upends the distinction between diurnal intellection and nocturnal visions and free-association.

Horror is not a numbing agent, but a proposal, an opportunity to meditate upon the method and medium of fear.

One reason to single out Cowling’s work is the frankness with which her scenarios deal with the acute agony of the present moment.

Ryckman brings the reader along through an exploration of the surprisingly overlapping territories of grief, sex, and religion.

“I don’t know if my longing to incorporate all of the voices I’ve heard and still seek out wouldn’t be as present as it is if I didn’t come up in a place where there were so many singing, harmonizing with the city.”

“I believe that part of the task of translation is to help us explore that complexity rather than looking away, and to understand difference instead of erasing it.”

On some level, Vermont remains the arugula-chomping hippie at the farmers’ market, while New Hampshire is still a guy asserting his right to mow the lawn while naked.

“And here’s the thing: even if folks are from the ghetto or the reservation, their lives do not fit into these predetermined binaries.”

This is the experience of waiting: wanting to be doing something but knowing it won’t mean anything—the meaning is what we’re waiting for.

How might experimental forms of criticism better serve marginalized works? Excerpts from a roundtable discussion.

At heart, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer ask us: what holds people together who are living through this political moment of breakage?

Geopolitics as a field is catnip for Traditionalists and others attracted by the high-end and fatuous.

Building an audible nest for intensifying, as a bird might shed drab feathers for bright ones in a time of courtship, an ordinary song for a mating call, my sonic ornament was a customized flush of puberty, a condensed libidinal vehemence.

Publishing’s leaders composed careful statements in the height of this summer’s protests for racial justice. But these ring hollow in the face of an industry rife with sexism, classism, and racism.

We discuss travel writing, its pitfalls, and what might come after the pandemic … if there’s really going to be an after.

The year’s best books, as selected by the editors of Full Stop.