At The Baffler, Sophie Pinkham writes about the Ukrainian artist and writer Yevgenia Belorusets. Discussing one of the author’s stories, which takes place during the 2014 crisis in the Eastern region of the country, Pinkham captures the bleak mood of the narrative: “The forgotten, bombed-out towns of eastern Ukraine no longer have the privilege of even the bad kind of history. They have become a purgatory: a fate worse than oblivion.”
The Story Prize has announced its longlist.
Leonard Cohen’s unpublished 1956 novel A Ballet of Lepers will be released this fall. The publication will also include short stories and a radio script from early in Cohen’s career.
NYU is hosting the first event in the spring Emerging Writers Reading Series tomorrow, February 25th. The event, featuring author Edgar Gomez, will be held in-person and streamed online.
For the New Republic, Robert Rubsam reviews the new novel by John Darnielle, the author and musician. Darnielle’s book explores the morality of the true-crime genre, and, Rubsam writes, “the novel’s best moments describe extremes. Darnielle expertly handles the violent scenes, presenting the death and dismemberment in a cool, controlled voice, heightening the horror by his refusal to obscure it.”
More than seventy films are available for free international streaming until March 1 through the virtual edition of this year’s Media City Film Festival, hosted in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. Among the films to stream are L.Franklin Gillam’s Now Pretend (1991), Carolee Schneemann’s Plumb Line (1972), and Sky Hopinka’s Kicking the Clouds (2022).