Literature Archives - Page 8 of 13

Literature

A translation of the poet’s very early work

March 18, 2022 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya

Boris Pasternak, a Jew by birth, chose to remain in Soviet Russia when the rest of his family, his famous father, painter and portraitist Leonid Pasternak including, had left, never to return....

Literature

How Black lives matter in A Journal of the Plague Year

February 9, 2022 • by Anna Neill

It isn’t hard to see why A Journal of the Plague Year has enjoyed renewed attention in recent times. But to invoke it without considering Defoe’s support for British imperialism and the expanding Atlantic slave trade is to make literary history complicit with colonial and racial injustice....

Literature

Literary Imperialism and Scenes of High Melodrama

When BIPOC and queer writers defy minimalism

February 1, 2022 • by Torsa Ghosal

The term melodrama is a value judgment—and as such, it can be careless. ...

Literary Imperialism and Scenes of High Melodrama

Literature

The Eleventh Mouse

A writer welcomes the unexpected at end of an old year and the start of a new one

January 3, 2022 • by Maureen Buchanan Jones

Here I was caring for another creature with more than a bit of martyrdom and annoyance in my heart. I had forgotten my self-administered advice as an antidote to despair that “something extraordinary is going to happen today.”...

Literature

Libertie

In Brooklyn in 1860, a daughter watches her mother bring a patient back from the dead, in this excerpt from Kaitlyn Greenidge’s second novel

December 15, 2021 • by Kaitlyn Greenidge

I saw my mother raise a man from the dead. “It still didn’t help him much, my love,” she told me. But I saw her do it all the same. That’s how I knew she was magic....

Literature

The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

December 15, 2021 • by Claire Potter

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—buying books for other people that you want to read yourself! And on that note, here are the best ones I read last year. All links are to IndieBound to gently nudge you to buy from independent bookstores. Fiction It’s a tie between Douglas Stuart’s ...

Literature

We Are Watching Eliza Bright

A woman speaks out against workplace hostility and becomes the target of the violent male collective

October 25, 2021 • by A.E. Osworth

Excerpted from Chapter 13 Eliza needs to go to the bathroom. She needs to go to the private bathroom, so she can cry alone. In her hands, she clutches two things—her phone and a printout of the Career Tree she filled out with Preston just last Friday. We aren’t sure why ...

Literature

A Trippy, Tech-Noir Novel Exploring the Dark Recesses of the Internet and Male Rage

A.E. Osworth chats with Public Seminar about Osworth’s debut novel, We Are Watching Eliza Bright

October 25, 2021 • by Vicky Oliver and A.E. Osworth

Published in 2021, A.E. Osworth’s debut novel, We Are Watching Eliza Bright (Grand Central Publishing) was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel prize. Osworth’s novel started as a homework assignment during their Creative Writing M.F.A. at The New School. They recently had a conversation with Public Seminar intern ...

Literature

Savage Tongues

Light, language, landscape, and the political context of intimate violence

October 15, 2021 • by Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi

Halfway to the apartment, I decided to cut through the blind alleys of the old city, to climb up through its shaded streets and stout houses, their windows gazing at one another coyly, to the Plaza de los Naranjos. I remembered an old woman who ran a shop in the ...

Literature

Confronting Buried Sexual Trauma

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi talks with Alexandra Kleeman with about her new novel, Savage Tongues

October 15, 2021 • by Alexandra Kleeman and Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi

On the publication of her new novel, Savage Tongues (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi sat down with New School faculty Alexandra Kleeman to discuss the rhythms of language, the influence of light, shadow, and landscape on prose, and the historical and political context of intimate violence. ...

Literature

The Other Black Girl

Two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York book publishing

September 29, 2021 • by Zakiya Dalila Harris

July 23, 2018Wagner Books Midtown Manhattan The first sign was the smell of cocoa butter. When it initially crept around the wall of her cubicle, Nella was too busy filing a stack of pages at her desk, aligning each and every one so that the manuscript was perfectly flush. She was so ...

Literature

What Happens to “Black Woman Number Two” in a White Workplace?

Zakiya Dalila Harris and Zia Jaffrey discuss Harris’s debut novel, The Other Black Girl

September 29, 2021 • by Zakiya Dalila Harris and Zia Jaffrey

In its first week of sale, The Other Black Girl (Atria Books, 2021) made the New York Times best-seller list. A TV adaptation is now underway with Hulu. This success is all the more impressive for a debut novel—one that draws, in part, on material author Zakiya Dalila Harris developed ...

Literature

Boris Pasternak in Spring

A translation of the poet’s very early work

Decolonizing Daniel Defoe

How Black lives matter in A Journal of the Plague Year

Literary Imperialism and Scenes of High Melodrama

When BIPOC and queer writers defy minimalism

The Eleventh Mouse

A writer welcomes the unexpected at end of an old year and the start of a new one

Libertie

In Brooklyn in 1860, a daughter watches her mother bring a patient back from the dead, in this excerpt from Kaitlyn Greenidge’s second novel

The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

We Are Watching Eliza Bright

A woman speaks out against workplace hostility and becomes the target of the violent male collective

A Trippy, Tech-Noir Novel Exploring the Dark Recesses of the Internet and Male Rage

A.E. Osworth chats with Public Seminar about Osworth’s debut novel, We Are Watching Eliza Bright

Savage Tongues

Light, language, landscape, and the political context of intimate violence

Confronting Buried Sexual Trauma

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi talks with Alexandra Kleeman with about her new novel, Savage Tongues

The Other Black Girl

Two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York book publishing

What Happens to “Black Woman Number Two” in a White Workplace?

Zakiya Dalila Harris and Zia Jaffrey discuss Harris’s debut novel, The Other Black Girl

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