Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a concise, fragmentary novel that runs to 100 pages. Within these tight constraints she finds room to examine the lingering colonial... Read more
Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, on solitude, Coast Salish style, and reconciliation
When people think of Indigenous art from the Pacific Northwest, it’s usually going to be something called formline, a technique that uses ovoid shapes, high contrast, and positive and negative space.
Dr Jeffrey Rediger on spontaneous healing, our current crisis, and why forgiveness is good for the body
Why is it that we, as a society, don’t pay more attention to stories of recovery? Why do we ignore examples of healing that don’t fit our paradigm of one cause,... Read more
Sarah Elaine Smith on race, rural America, and Marilou is Everywhere
In Sarah Elaine Smith’s new novel, Marilou is Everywhere, a young woman from Deep Valley, Pennsylvania, goes missing. Jude Vanderjohn is smart, beautiful and se... Read more
Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar is a love story: a tale of obsession and betrayal. But not between lovers: between mother and daughter. Their unsettled relationship sp... Read more
This month I read Lydia Davis’s latest, Essays, before our arranged phone conversation. Davis’s writing voice is always articulate and persuasive, especially wh... Read more
Julian Hoffman’s latest book, Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, is a cry to see, to examine what we still have, to appreciate what is quickly di... Read more
The author of Notes to Self on blood, the body and Beckett
As an associate professor of modern drama, Emilie Pine is used to employing the disembodied writing style of academic discourse. The voice comes from afar, or a... Read more
Bernardine Evaristo reveals why she nearly populated her novel, Girl, Woman, Other, with one hundred characters
Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction. Her other writing includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, li... Read more
Marlon James on the vast world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
'War is complicated. Revenge is complicated. These things carry costs. It was very important for me, even though I was writing a fantasy novel, to make it a very grown up book.'
