Of Dust and Dreams: A Profile of Karen Russell
Karen Russell’s new novel, The Antidote, was born of a single image: A woman holds a sparkling emerald-green horn to her ear through which she receives someone’s secret and stores…
Dismantling the Mother Shelf: Expanding Our Thinking About Women’s Stories of Parenthood
When it comes to the Mother Shelf, it’s tempting to shrug our collective shoulders and say, Well, that’s just how book marketing works. But the uncomfortable truth is that publishers,…
Q&A: Stewart Battles Book Bans at PRH
In September 2024, during Banned Books Week, Penguin Random House (PRH) expanded its Intellectual Freedom Taskforce, a group dedicated to protecting the freedom to read, by naming Rosie Stewart senior…
Following the Sounds of Poetry
There are multiple pathways from Anne Carson’s poetry to Ross Gay’s prose. One need only listen, the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson reminds us, and follow…
AI Threatens Literary Translation
The etymology of the word translation—“to carry across”—conjures an image of physical labor. It is deeply relational, requiring at least two bodies, those of an author and of the person…
Healing From Helene
In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene inundated western North Carolina with record rainfall that caused catastrophic flooding and mudslides, leading to more than a hundred storm-related deaths, according to the…
How the Light Gets In: The Nightlight
In being a parent and being a writer, there is no routine, no one way of doing things that is right; some things that we must do to get the…
How the Light Gets In: The Moon
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve lost access to much of the community I’ve relied on as a writer. My husband has profound long COVID—I don’t want to risk…
How the Light Gets In: The Lighthouse
This group brought me back to a writing practice. It taught me something I learned when I first fell in love with writing but had forgotten over time, bit by…
What’s Left Out: The Poems That Haunt a Collection From the Outside
At a dinner table packed with writers and book people at the 2024 Western Carolina University Spring Literary Festival, held in April in Cullowhee, North Carolina, the cofounder of Gold…