Emma Straub’s latest novel, Modern Lovers, came out on Tuesday—just in time to top your summer reading lists. The book follows a group of college friends and ex-bandmates as they struggle to come to terms with their middle aged, adult lives in Brooklyn, navigating the difficulties of marriage, parenting, and illegal kombucha production. This book has everything we have come to expect from Straub: a richly imagined story of complex human relationships, layered with her characteristic wit, charm, ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Embracing the World, from High to Low: An Interview with Benjamin Hale
In his first story collection, Benjamin Hale introduces us to characters who inhabit the margins of society: an expat outlaw revolutionary trying to find her way home, a dominatrix confronting a new possible role as mother, a performance artists eating himself towards death. What at first may read as absurd becomes meaningful and then moving through Hale’s skillful and playful storytelling. We reached out to Hale to talk about his writing process and his new collection, which was published ... [READ MORE]
Winners of the American Short(er) Fiction Prize
It is time to raise your fruit for the winners of the 2016 American Short(er) Fiction Contest, judged by Amelia Gray! This year we had many wonderful submissions, so thank you to all who submitted to the contest—reading your stories has been an honor and a pleasure, a welcome reminder of the beauty and versatility and promise of the flash-fiction form. The first-place prize goes to Erin Somers, for her story “Canine.” Gray writes, "Funny, eerie and sharp as a bloody tooth, this story shows ... [READ MORE]
Web Exclusive Interview: Daniel LoPilato
What with baseball season now in full swing, May's Web Exclusive Fiction is incredibly timely—and yet timeless. In "Your Father," a dad and son try to connect through a televised baseball game. At its heart is a dilemma that has always played itself out and will continue to do so for as long as we have to contend with our parents' identities and our own, regardless of the technology involved. We talked with author Daniel LoPilato about the parent-child struggle, identity, and irony. Basically, ... [READ MORE]
Hunter S. Thompson & Oscar Acosta in the Desert:
A 45-Year Retrospective
1. _ On the morning of Friday, March 19th, 1971, Hunter S. Thompson, already the bestselling author of one book and long overdue on his contract for another, accepted what appeared to be a fairly innocuous journalistic assignment: write five hundred words of copy for Sports Illustrated to go along with a photo essay on the Mint 400 motorcycle race, which was scheduled to take place that coming weekend in Las Vegas 1. It was a cushy offer, to say the least: Thompson would get paid three ... [READ MORE]
Editorial Outtakes: Benjamin Warner
Editorial Outtakes is a feature in which we publish excerpts from novels and story collections that you won’t find in the finished books because, prior to publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene by Benjamin Warner, whose debut novel, Thirst, was published by Bloomsbury last week. An intense, literary novel with the pacing of a thriller, Thirst is first and foremost a novel interested in asking us the question: what would you do in ... [READ MORE]