What moves a writer to write? The work is laborious. The pay is meager. And readers are a small, fussbudgety bunch. Gore Vidal said that being a writer is essential to one’s nature—one is born a writer, or not. For …
Jacob Kiernan
The Strangest Thing You’ve Ever Eaten: An Interview with Alexandra Kleeman
In Alexandra Kleeman’s newly released debut novel, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (Harper Collins, 2015), an algebraically named cast navigates cults, game shows and romance. When the book opens, A’s relationship with her inattentive boyfriend, C, is …
Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories
Calligraphy Lessons: The Collected Stories, by Mikhail Shishkin. Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz, Leo Shtutin, Mariya Bashkatova, and Sylvia Maizell. Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015. $12, 180 pages.
Mikhail Shishkin, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Russian …
Salad Anniversary
Salad Anniversary, by Machi Tawara. Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Pushkin Press, 2015. $14, 112 pages.
Since the end of World War II, the Western appetite for Japanese literature has grown tremendously, yet most writing being translated from the …
