An impressionist painting: From up close, in the throes, the canvas is a blur of colors overlapping, brushstrokes smooth and coarse, repetitive, messy, dizzying, dazzling, dark, and light. But from a distance, the wildness of the expression appears tame. You see the oil painting for what it is: An intricate composition from the paintbrush of a master […]
I was first introduced to Issac Bailey at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest last June, where he spoke about his book My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South. My Brother Moochie is a powerful, personal exploration of race and racism and of the […]
Young writers are finding ways to speak out through character. Pulled from the news, fiction and fact condense into compelling personal accounts. But Naima Coster isn’t politicizing a message. Her work is far more reaching, more tender, and more carefully wrought. This Yale, Columbia, and Fordham graduate draws the straight line of success from classwork […]
Christopher Castellani, the son of Italian-American immigrants, is best known for his critically-acclaimed trilogy of novels about an Italian-American family: A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin Books, 2003), The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin, 2005), and All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013). Filled with real and complex characters living in turbulent times, the Grasso family’s story reminded me of my […]
Natashia Deón is the acclaimed author of Grace (Counterpoint Press, 2016), a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a New York Times Top Book 2016, an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016, and winner of the American Library Association Black Caucus 2017 First Novel Prize, among other honors. Deón is a graduate of the University […]
Who is Isaac Fitzgerald? This inked essayist is the love child of Jack Kerouac and The Dropkick Murphys on paper. He is gritty and adventurous like his beatnik predecessor, but has the modern punk rock sensibility of the same band that hails from his home state of Massachusetts. Fitzgerald easily picks up where the beatniks […]
Vandana Khanna has published two full-length collections of poetry, Train to Agra and Afternoon Masala, as well as her most recent chapbook The Goddess Monologues. Among her achievements are notable features in the New England Review, The Missouri Review, 32 Poems, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, […]
Ada Limón is a poet and author of Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World (both debuted in 2006), Sharks in the Rivers (2010), and Bright Dead Things (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her latest book, The Carrying, is the […]
Rodolfo Montalvo is a Los Angeles-based children’s book illustrator with work published in both traditional print and digital media. His illustrated books include The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School and The Amazing Wilmer Dooley (both written by Fowler Dewitt), and the picture book Dear Dragon by Josh Funk. Bye Land, Bye Sea will be […]
Throughout her work and life, Bich Minh Nguyen has explored identity. In her memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, she describes how as a child in Michigan, she craved Hamburger Helper and was perplexed when eating bánh chung, the special sticky rice cakes her Vietnamese family enjoyed at Tet, didn’t tantalize her taste buds. In her novels, characters […]
Ben Loory is a good guy who writes great short stories. The end. If it were only that easy. Behind his smoothly carved stories, Loory revises and refines drafts sometimes for years before they’re finished. A few, he writes in one afternoon. His characters are compelling; nameless, often faceless, possibly mirrors of ourselves—even if ducks […]
On August 14th, I had the honor of interviewing Jeff Shotts, Executive Editor of Graywolf Press in Minneapolis, MN, by phone. A native of McPherson, Kansas, and graduate of Washington University’s MFA program, Shotts began his career as an editorial assistant before going on to edit poetry and nonfiction. After hearing his guest lecture during […]
Khadijah Queen (to remix two very famous quotes by Walt Whitman and Lionel Blue) contains multitudes like everybody else, only more so. In one sense, the scope of her work is so radically diverse in form and genre that it’s difficult imagining all of it coming from one author. Queen describes a literary life that […]
You’ve probably read David Ulin’s work in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, The Paris Review, Black Clock, Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Zyzzyva, Columbia Journalism Review, The Believer, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Ulin has also been a contributor to docufilms, such as Lost LA and the upcoming Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in […]
I still remember the moment I first swiped one of Francesca Lia Block’s books from my big brother’s bookshelf. Splayed out across my family’s living room floor in our downtown Los Angeles apartment, I devoured the modern fairy tales in Blood Roses with a hunger I hadn’t realized was there. Moving on to her other […]
Alistair McCartney is more apt to graciously smile and walk by, than stay and chat. Amiable and courteous, he’s an unassuming type who stays out of the spotlight. Author of The Disintegrations: A Novel (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017), he recently won the Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. The Seattle Times and ENTROPY named it one of the best works […]
Juan Felipe Herrera is the author of several poetry collections, short stories, young adult literature, and children’s books. Among many of his works are the recent Notes on the Assemblage, Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, and The Upside Down Boy. He became the US poet laureate in 2015 for two […]
I found LA based writer Siel Ju’s novel Cake Time: a novel-in-stories during a trip to LA in December 2017, and I was hooked. I easily fell into the rhythm of the book’s structure and style, and Siel’s use of language: witty and sharp. The next logical step for me, of course, was to use […]
Tony Lewis, Jr is a husband, father, son, author and activist. He works diligently, fighting for the rights of incarcerated men and women who have left family behind. But most importantly, he is fighting for the DCPS school system to offer aid to children who have an incarcerated parent. He also uses his voice to […]
Cecil Castellucci’s stories remind us that we find vulnerability and courage in the face of new situations and obstacles. Castellucci is a flexible writer, capable of expressing her stories through several artistic mediums. Her characters embody the passion, joy, and confusion of those delicate young adult years. Her world-building immerses the reader into the 1930s […]
Lisa Dickey is a longtime ghostwriter and author who has collaborated on seventeen nonfiction books, eight of which became New York Times bestsellers. Her clients have included celebrities such as Herbie Hancock and Patrick Swayze, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, and many others with diverse backgrounds, from CIA agents to business titans. Many of Lisa’s […]
‘A Totally Wild Idea’: The Writing and Realms of Eloise Klein Healy On a sunny September day in Sherman Oaks, California, a gray Portuguese water dog greeted me at the door of prolific poet and publisher Eloise Klein Healy. If it’s all right, I have some things to show you, Healy said as she […]
I grew up loving Sherlock Holmes. I’d read all fifty-six stories and four novels multiple times before I was twelve years old. And he represented power to me. I mean, I was a small kid in a big neighborhood. And I wasn’t a badass. But language just seemed like a form of power. Intelligence seemed like a form of power. To know that Sherlock Holmes could control his world with just a brain seemed amazing to me. And so, he was always my alter ego. … I never considered writing any other character but a Sherlock Holmes character.
Ashaki Jackson began her career as a social psychologist and program evaluator before focusing on the craft of poetry. Ms. Jackson was a Cave Canem fellow and a poetry activist. She also cofounded Women Who Submit, an organization that helps women with the submission of their literary work to bring about more gender balance in […]
During Antioch’s June 2016 residency, my mentor suggested I pick up a copy of Matt de la Peña’s Newbery Medal-winning picture book, Last Stop on Market Street, to explore the effective use of diversity in children’s literature. When I returned home to Arizona, I not only picked up a copy of de la Peña’s book, […]
Natashia Deón is a 2017 NAACP Image Award Nominee. The New York Times and Kirkus Review named Deón’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Grace, a Best Book of 2016. She is a practicing attorney and law professor, and creator of the popular LA-based reading series, Dirty Laundry Lit. Her works have appeared in American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, and other places. Deón is the […]
I get so tired out by the need to defend literature’s usefulness in terms of these measurable, moral and productive terms. Obviously this is important for humanity, thinking about our own interior experiences and how they bump up against other people’s interior and exterior experiences, so I always feel tired out by the weak position of literature and always having to defend it in this capitalist society, or usefulness-driven society. …
Dara Hyde loves books. After a decade as an editor and rights and permissions manager at the independent publisher Grove Atlantic in New York, Hyde moved to Los Angeles to become an agent at Hill Nadell. Hyde represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, including young adult, genre fiction, graphic novels, narrative nonfiction, and […]
I read Tara Ison’s first novel, A Child Out of Alcatraz, shortly after its publication in 1997. I’d spent a good chunk of my own adolescence in San Francisco living in Fort Mason while my father was stationed at Oakland Army Base, across the East Bay. At the time, Fort Mason was a smattering of […]
Fady Joudah was born in Austin, Texas to Palestinian refugee parents. He spent time growing up in both Libya and Saudi Arabia, and returned to the United States to complete his medical education. He currently works as a professional physician in Houston, Texas. Joudah is the author of three original works: The Earth in the […]
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