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

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....

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Libertie

The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

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 ...
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The Best Books I Read in 2021

When Diane Arbus Came to Central Park

The New York City story of a latchkey kid and a trailblazing photographer

For me as a city kid, Central Park was a forbidden Eden. Even though I grew up a stone’s throw from the park, my parents forbade me to walk there, even chaperoned, even in broad daylight. And so, it’s all the more astounding that I recently found myself trotting—no, tearing over—to see ...
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When Diane Arbus Came to Central Park

What Does It Mean to Be “Written By a Woman?”

How a misleading phrase went viral on TikTok, Twitter, and then became part of the Gen Z lexicon

He could be skinny or ripped or somewhere in between, but never fat. He’s different from most of the men you meet: He doesn’t catcall, he doesn’t question your rape story, and he would never, ever put anything other than your pleasure and happiness first. He could be old or ...
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What Does It Mean to Be “Written By a Woman?”

Titane: Transformative Gender and Intimacy

The winner of the 2021 Palme d’Or takes us through hell and out the other side

The following review contains spoilers. My friend has a phrase she likes to use about her new dog. “I look at him from across the room,” she says, after talking to me about all the piss pads littering her apartment floor, “and I can tell he’s having bad dog thoughts.” Something ...
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Titane: Transformative Gender and Intimacy

We Are Watching Eliza Bright

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

 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 ...
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We Are Watching Eliza Bright

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

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

Savage Tongues

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

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 ...
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Savage Tongues

Confronting Buried Sexual Trauma

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

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. ...
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Confronting Buried Sexual Trauma

The Other Black Girl

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

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 ...
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The Other Black Girl

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

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

A Displaced Worker in a World of Goods

What Winslow Homer’s Old Mill teaches us about the world industrialization made

A woman in a red jacket, lunch pail in hand and eyes forward, travels to work. She ascends a ramp leading from a meadow of wildflowers, over a millpond to a small water-powered textile factory. Winslow Homer painted Old Mill in 1871, but its subject looks back fifty years to the first ...
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A Displaced Worker in a World of Goods