Cristina Rivera Garza. Photo: And Other Stories For the New Yorker, Merve Emre considers Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza’s body of work. In Rivera Garza’s new story collection, out now from Dorothy, the dearth of proper names is generative: “The substitution of a descriptive epithet for a proper name is Rivera Garza’s signature technique for creating character. It is a baptismal act that reveals the lie behind all description. There is nothing natural or essential about the words—‘man,’ ‘woman’—that categorize people.” Rivera Garza’s writing is rife with other revealing gaps and elisions; discussing the absence of the word “femicide”

Namwali Serpell. Photo: © Peg Skorpinski BOMB magazine has put together a selection of pieces from their archives to celebrate Pride month, with contributions from Cookie Mueller, Gary Indiana, and Brontez Purnell, interviews with Audre Lorde, Hilton Als, and Féliz Gonzáles-Torres, reflections on the Orlando nightclub shooting, art and the body, and much more.  At the New York Review of Books, Namwali Serpell considers “the figure of the Whore” in art and literature, from Emile Zola’s Nana to Janicza Bravo’s 2020 film Zola. “Wherever she appears,” Serpell writes, “she’s pressed into service as a rhetorical or symbolic conceit. It

The Death Panel podcast has unlocked its episode about the end of Roe v. Wade, featuring a conversation with the hosts and Melissa Gira Grant, Charlotte Shane, and Abby Cartus.

Lauren Michele Jackson. Northwestern University At Gawker, Tarpley Hitt writes about the decision by New York magazine and Elizabeth Weil to anonymize her cover feature “Canceled at 17” and not to disclose that one of Weil’s children attended the school the story is about. Hitt argues that the latter choice distorted the story; had Weil’s connection to the school been revealed, “It would have also revealed the piece for what it was: a personal, and by extension, particular, story—not, as it purported to be, a sweeping parable of the times. That tension presents an inherent flaw in the assignment.

Mike Davis. Photo: Wikimedia Commons On social media, tributes are pouring in for activist, scholar, and historian Mike Davis, who is terminally ill. Davis, the author of more than a dozen books, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. In 2021, Micah Uetricht wrote for The Nation that “Over the course of a remarkable career, [Davis] has been resolutely clear-eyed about the nightmares we face as a society and a planet, mostly bearish on the prospects for reversing those nightmares, and always prescient.” For Bookforum, Sasha Frere-Jones reviewed Davis’s latest book (cowritten with Jon

Fiona McCrae Graywolf publisher Fiona McCrae is retiring after twenty-eight years at the helm of the venerable independent press. Ethan Nosowsky, an editor at Graywolf, writes: “There are many wonderful publishers who are not terrific managers; there are many terrific managers who are not inspiring publishers. There are perhaps some inspiring publishers who are also somehow terrific managers but there is no way they are also brilliant fundraisers. Fiona is so good at all of these things. I have always admired the way that she is extremely ambitious for Graywolf and has very high expectations of herself and of her

For The Guardian, Moira Donegan discusses the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and emphasizes that “the real story is the millions of women, and others, who now know that they are less free than men are—less free in the functioning of their own bodies, less free in the paths of their own lives, less free in the formation of their own families.” A recording of last week’s event on the state of reproductive rights in the US with Lux magazine, Verso Books, and Haymarket Books is available on YouTube now. Speakers Laurie Bertram Roberts, Monica Raye

Patrick Radden Keefe. Photo: Philip Montgomery On the Death Panel podcast, Jules Gill-Peterson and Charlie Markbreiter discuss a recent New York Times Magazine cover story about gender therapy and medical transition. And at the New Inquiry, Gill-Peterson and Bea Adler-Bolton talk about anti-trans policies, with Gill-Peterson observing, “In the face of such dire circumstances, it’s stunning that some of the most visible criticisms of these laws have reduced them to the realm of identity politics, as if the difference between pro- and anti- trans is whether or not you rhetorically bless trans people.”  In her Substack, Jessica Valenti argues

Octavia E. Butler. Photo: Nikolas Coukouma/Wikicommons Science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler was born on this day in 1947. To celebrate, London’s NTS Radio is broadcasting a full day of programming in her honor. And at Public Books, Sasha Ann Panaram offers an appreciation of Butler’s work and introduces an essay by Sheila Liming and an interview with Lynell George. You can read more about Butler’s life and work in the Spring 2021 issue of Bookforum, in which Gabrielle Bellot reviewed a Library of America edition of her novels and short stories.  Electric Literature has announced “Both/And,” a forthcoming

Imogen Binnie For the New Yorker, Stephanie Burt writes about Imogen Binnie’s Nevada and the invention of the trans novel. First published in 2013, Nevada was just reissued by FSG. Burt notes that for  Binnie, “Authenticity, not uplift, is the point.”  In the summer issue of the Paris Review, Lidija Haas conducts an “Art of Fiction” interview with Sigrid Nunez. They discuss Nunez’s linear process, writing about one’s parents, corresponding with readers about loss, and more. Of her recent novel The Friend, Nunez said: “There is some poet—it might have been Lowell—who said about his writing, ‘I want to

Margo Jefferson. Photo: © Claire Holt In the new issue of The Drift, Alexandra Kleeman, Christian Lorentzen, Tope Folarin, Hannah Gold, and more weigh in on the state of contemporary literary fiction: “​​Which styles are dying out, and which are flourishing? What’s changed since 2020, or even 2015? Glibly… did the pandemic kill autofiction?” BOMB magazine shares an archival interview with painter Duncan Hannah, who died on Saturday at the age of sixty-nine. In the 1982 interview, Simon Lane asked Hannah about his paintings of famous writers. Of James Joyce, the painter said: “People treat Joyce so seriously, and

Ruth Ozeki. Photo: Danielle Tait. Ruth Ozeki has won the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel The Book of Form and Emptiness. The Women’s Prize also hosts a podcast where you can listen to author interviews, get book recommendations, and more.   The Drift is throwing an issue-release party tonight at the Public Hotel in New York City.  For Vulture, Andrea Long Chu reviews Ottessa Moshfegh’s new novel, Lapvona, which is set in a medieval village. Chu writes of Moshfegh, who likes to revel in degradation and filth in her work, “These days, the leading coprophage of American

Megha Majumdar. Photo: © Elena Seibert The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr interviews Joe Kahn, the new executive editor of the New York Times. Kahn doesn’t seem poised to make major changes at the paper, but shares former editor Dean Baquet’s belief that journalists should de-prioritize Twitter.  In the new issue of The Drift, Jake Bitte writes about Naomi Klein’s 2014 book This Changes Everything, greenwashing, and speculates about the future of green capitalism: “The world economy will cross the canyon on the tightrope of profit—instead of a Green New Deal, we will get a green Art of the Deal.” Bittle

Tonight, join us as we host the first episode of our new video series, “Off the Page,” featuring Margo Jefferson and Blair McClendon live in conversation. The virtual event is free if you RSVP here. Reviewing Jefferson’s new memoir, Constructing a Nervous System, for the spring issue of Bookforum, McClendon notes that for this book, Jefferson tried a new conception of autobiography: “Rather than using her life’s narrative to structure the book, she organizes her becoming through her models. Who, she asks herself, were those people she secreted away? In whose eyes did she see herself reflected?” Pantheon Books

Duncan Hannah Duncan Hannah—a deeply literary artist and the author of the memoir 20th-Century Boy—has died.  Lisa Lucas of Pantheon has acquired the new novel by Justin Taylor. Reboot is about a former child actor who is “charged with kissing the appropriate rings to in order to reboot the cult TV teen soap that made him famous, only to be pulled into a national scandal where the show itself becomes a flashpoint for the culture wars.”  Critic Laura Miller has won the Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing for her Slate essay about rereading Alice Sebold’s memoir

Pankaj Mishra  The editors of The Drift interview Pankaj Mishra about the mainstream media’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West’s lack of historical memory, de-Americanization, and the collapse of American ideology abroad. “A lot of what we’re seeing today, whether it’s Modi’s Hindu chauvinism, Chinese supremacism, or Russian imperialism, is an attempt to resurrect or recreate or forward some kind of ‘indigenous’ ideology,” Mishra notes. “Because there’s a big vacuum there, left by a catastrophic loss of faith in America.”  National political reporter Felicia Sonmez has been fired from the Washington Post following a conflict over newsroom

Sloane Crosley. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan At Interview magazine, Sloane Crosley talks about her new novel, Cult Classic, with Lauren Oyler. Describing one of the book’s characters, Crosley notes, “We’re all victims of too much self-analysis, and we can collapse under the weight of the perfect decision, which is something that happens to her.” For Vanity Fair, Charlotte Klein details the turmoil at the Washington Post, as internal disputes spilled out onto Twitter, a high-profile reporter was suspended, another journalist called out the paper’s sexism and lack of accountability,  and star writer Taylor Lorenz publicly blamed a “miscommunication with an

Solmaz Sharif. Photo: Emma Larson/The Shipman Agency Rozina Ali profiles the Iranian American poet Solmaz Sharif, author of the collections Look and Customs, for Lux magazine. “One of the oft-repeated misconceptions of Sharif as a political poet is that she is not as concerned about aesthetics as she is about the message,” Ali writes. “She rejects this. For Sharif, language and liberation are tied, but if that was all there was to her work, she told me, she would have been an orator.” Words Without Borders has launched their redesigned and reconceived website, with contributions from Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael

Anne Carson. Photo: Peter Smith.  The summer issue of the Yale Review is out now, with Becca Rothfeld on the merits of high-school debate tournaments, Sarah Chihaya on reading Anne Carson after a breakup, and Terrance Hayes’s review of poet Tim Seibles (told in the form of a board game), and much more.    The New York Public Library is accepting applications for the 2023–2024 Cullman Center Fellowship.  At Gawker, Leah Finnegan covers the Twitter infighting at the Washington Post. Finnegan writes, “It’s funny how legacy papers can’t figure out their stance on social media. Their indecisiveness creates a culture

Arinze Ifeakandu. Photo: Bec Stupak Diop “What or who inspired you to start writing?” Jessica Swoboda asks Tobi Haslett in an interview published by The Point. Haslett responds: “Impossible question, in part because I’m one of those people who always wanted to be a writer. But I may or may not be freakish in that I can recall the specific moment when I decided that actually going for it might not be a complete waste of time. The spring I graduated from college, n+1 published an essay called ‘Cultural Revolution.’ It was a manifesto, or at least I read