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The Stitching of Lucille Clifton’s Quilt

A Recommendation of How to Carry Water by Shakeya Hughes Lucille Clifton’s poetry is like a quilt, stitched together with the fabric of her life: black feminism, inspiration and genealogy. In the anthology How to Carry Water, Aracelius Girmay, a black feminist poet herself, analyzes Mama Clifton’s quilt to figure out the pieces of her past.Continue reading “The Stitching of Lucille Clifton’s Quilt“

In Conversation with Randall Horton

An interview by Deniqua Campbell I met Randall Horton my first year at the Writer’s Foundry. He has the kind of laugh that makes you laugh; loud but warm, silly but genuine. After approximately two to three in-person poetry workshops, we were back on lockdown after Covid outbreaks spiked in the area. The remainder ofContinue reading “In Conversation with Randall Horton”

The Tragicomedy of Persuasion

How Jane Austen’s Last Completed Novel Blows Up the Romantic Comedy by Tom Storch Jane Austen is a paradoxical figure. She died in 1817, yet her work is still widely read and frequently adapted. She blurs the line between realism and genre fiction. She is a master of the marriage plot, but she creates charactersContinue reading “The Tragicomedy of Persuasion”

A Novel of One and Many

The Self and Community Consciousness in Edouard Louis’ End of Eddy by Walker Minot The title character of The End of Eddy is Eddy Bellegueule, or Eddy “beautiful face,” born in a provincial working-class town near Amiens, in the north of France. He is an effeminate, gay child with a strange voice and interests in dance andContinue reading “A Novel of One and Many”

Writer-to-Writer

Advice That Never Grows Old, A Review of 1949’s The Human Nature of Playwriting by Samson Raphaelson by Nina Semczuk The best books about writing combine craft practicalities—such as the necessity of rewrites—with a down-to-earth, encouraging spirit, and my favorites include a dash of memoir. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Stephen King’s On Writing come to mind as exemplars ofContinue reading “Writer-to-Writer”

Waking Up

Revisiting My Year of Rest and Relaxation in a Post Quarantine World by Walker Minot “’Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” -Ephesians 5:14 My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) is the second-most recent novel by the Jewish-Iranian-American writer Ottessa Moshfegh. It became her breakout book, following the modest commercial and impressiveContinue reading “Waking Up”

In Conversation: Andrew Martin

An interview by Tom Storch In his 2018 debut novel, Early Work, and in the stories from his collection, Cool for America, which was released last summer, Andrew Martin nails a certain type of character. They are self-styled intellectuals and artists. They define their identities in large part through cultural touchstones and aesthetic tastes. Characters in Cool for America goContinue reading “In Conversation: Andrew Martin”