The Tidings of the Trees – Wolfgang Hilbig
Dust, bodies, and digging all have thematic importance in Hilbig’s fiction.
Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing – Ursula K. Le Guin and David Naimon
The book feels intended as a portal through which many future readers will pass, not only on into the many works of Ursula Le Guin, but from them out onto the way and from there who knows toward what other worlds.
The throbbing pulse of the book, which ties together its many disparate and overlapping narratives, is a confrontation with the ways that self-realization can also lead to violence and the objectification of others.
M Archive: After the End of the World – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Emitting Afrofuturism and centering black female imagination, M ARCHIVE embodies critical future writing now.
The Years, Months, Days – Yan Lianke
It is the confusion that comes with the real-life impact of intangible things that causes the most destruction.
So much poetry from writers of color is rooted in an immediate sense of identity and place; Leung is beyond that.
How to Write An Autobiographical Novel – Alexander Chee
Chee’s turns of phrase feel slightly awkward; a bit unfinished, while at the same time, complete and satisfying in a way that defies grammar.
Anaïs Nin: An Unprofessional Study
Ali fulfills the promise of performative embodied criticism best in co-creative sections with notes for art installations, a choreography, a symphony, or a film; that is, when he himself manages to reimagine the textual self and the world, as Nin’s deep preoccupation with the memory of the body allows us to do.
Sick: A Memoir – Porochista Khakpour
The public-facing myth of the good sick girl is a myth that Khakpour is intent on breaking throughout her memoir, and her crystal clear intent, the nuance, is successful.
It’s arguable that BELLY UP simply presents an allegorical South: maybe all the more evidently brittle and compromised, with an extra little shine of strangeness.