The Kingdom of Surfaces – Sally Wen Mao
The Kingdom of Surfaces is an honest portrayal of the evils of commodification as well as what we humans are willing to suffer through or cause suffering upon for the sake of beauty.
The January Children – Safia Elhillo
In The January Children, the power of poetry unfurls like a tapestry of emotions, weaving together the threads of nostalgia, history, and longing.
We, the Heartbroken – Gargi Bhattacharyya
The point, perhaps, is to feel our way through these muddy waters together: to look to the horizon, even if we might not yet know how to row.
Who Killed My Father — Édouard Louis
Édouard Louis’s father is not dead, but the political ruling class in France have, in one way or another, killed him. And Louis intends to name names.
To Love an Artist – Valerie Hsiung
What does it mean to write within a global economy where some possess a choice-giving mobility—like the ability to make art and travel—while others remain locked in grueling struggles for survival?
Under a Kabul Sky: Short Fiction by Afghan Women
Given the cavernous absence of Afghan women short story writers in English anthologies of Persian literature, it is ground-breaking that we have collections like Under a Kabul Sky.
As post-apocalyptic as they come, Sift refuses to imagine a return to agriculture and self-government. The world truly and finally ends.
Even in an age of exhausted postmodernity, in which there’s supposedly nothing new under the sun, the imagination may give rise to something unforeseen, unprecedented: We’ll know it by our laughter.
Starboard of My Wife – Yotsumoto Yasuhiro
The stuff of life, no matter how quotidian—indeed, precisely because it is quotidian—becomes the raw material for invention, like a long marriage.
At the Edge of the Woods – Kathryn Bromwich
“Santa, strega, saint, witch.” Names matter, and Laura wonders which is true of her. Is she a woman made holy by an ascetic control over her impulses, or is she a witch marked as dangerous for conceding to her impulses?