Two books of Afrofuturist fiction envision Black possibility and protest
…and present together, taking the reader from slave ship to suburb in the space of a single paragraph. In congruence with the breadth of the African diaspora, the language throughout…
Past and present mingle in collections by Loving, Shockley, and Underwood
…ancient, unnamed river / surrounding the island of my dead.” These lines set the tone for the rest of the collection, in which the underworld of dreams always hovers close….
Book Excerpt: The Intimacy of Spoons
…coppering the sun — the blustering air turned Hawk into a cluster of stars a sudden constellation outshining Orion and Bear a new god to kneel to in song and…
SunAh M Laybourn on her new book exploring Korean adoptee identity
…the course of the book, Laybourn, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Memphis, talks to Korean American adoptees about their experiences, their sense of identity and, importantly,…
Percival Everett’s James builds a new story from an old one
…since, often with two major works in the same year. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2021 for his novel Telephone. The following year, The Trees was shortlisted for the…
In Edgar Kunz’s Fixer, plain language makes way for depth of meaning
…the collection. In the poem “Squatters,” the speaker observes the movements of squatting neighbors, but in “Golden Gate” the speaker occupies that same taboo social position: “When the work was…
