Stolen goods: metafictional wheels within wheels abound in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s thriller The Plot
The novel is among a series of recent thrillers that focus on writers behaving badly.
While mainstream publishers wage internal wars, a new upstart threatens to import online polarization into the print sphere
The potential for importing internet and cable news level divisiveness into publishing appears more dangerous than the tradition of publishing across the political spectrum.
“They don’t see it until they see it”: Cheryl Thompson on Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kevin Hart, and the legacy of a complicated literary figure
The through-line in Thompson’s book involves a historical inability on the part of Western culture to see Black people as fully human.
Tales of Transgression: Joris-Karl Huysmans’s demonic inferno, Là-Bas
Huysmans shared his protagonist’s disgust with humanity and longed to create a new kind of literature.
“Literally, we just started Googling”: Shelley Youngblut on Calgary Wordfest’s new online streaming service, Imagine on Air
The Calgary literary festival’s streaming service is one part of an ecosystem that will include online content and live events.
Running in the family: Jordan Abel’s multimedia, polyvalent memoir addresses issues of identity and cultural heritage in the face of intergenerational trauma
Griffin Poetry Prize winner Abel has crafted a cross-genre work that addresses questions of identity and the ways we are affected by past hurt.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 31: “Precious Bane” by Gerald Murnane
A Borgesian story about literary posterity and the fickleness of memory, from an Australian master.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 30: “Gazebo” by Raymond Carver
A powerful monument to what the short form is capable of from “the most influential writer of American short stories in the second half of the 20th century.”
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 29: “Abortion, A Love Story” by Nicole Flattery
Irish author Flattery’s novella-length story is an enthusiastic evisceration of the patriarchy and institutional pomposity.
31 Days of Stories 2021, Day 28: “The Secret Sharer” by Joseph Conrad
Conrad’s story is at once a version of a doppelgänger story and an examination of repressed psychology and moral ambiguity.