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A slim novel in three parts, Living in Your Light centers on Malika, an indomitable Moroccan woman modeled on the author’s mother. Visiting the souk with her father at Béni-Mallal, south of Rabat, in the mid-1950s, seventeen-year-old Malika falls headlong in love with Allal, the son of a distant relative. Her father leaves the pair…
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Jonathan Taylor writes about A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons from Goldsmiths Press. + “We’ll look back on this and laugh”: What I learned about memoir in writing…
In Alex Higley’s True Failure, if the American Dream survives anywhere, it’s in the realm of reality TV, where shrewd producers create a social microcosm in which small windfalls come to those bold enough to compete for them. True Failure centers on the fictitious Big Shot, a Shark Tank-esque production where aspiring contestants pitch business…
Sister Deborah by French-Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, begins in 1930s Rwanda with the arrival from the United States of a group of Black evangelical Christians preaching of a Black Jesus who will arrive on a cloud. The Americans bring with them Sister Deborah, a young woman noted for…
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Maggie Cooper writes about The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies from Bull City Press. + I am an inveterate googler. I try to control myself: I don’t google during theatrical performances,…
Miles Harvey’s debut collection The Registry of Forgotten Objects (Mad Creek Books, 2024)looks at the stories of the objects in our lives, how they change meanings, and tie the past to the present in new ways as they drift between and among people’s lives. Each of these stories explore how objects evoke strange and interesting…
What an apt title for this memorable debut collection! Stuber’s grownups are often sad, both in terms of their affect and in performance of grownup tasks—notably, parenting. Happily, though, a wry humor and compassion give these well-crafted, moving stories balance and warmth. Stuber has created characters who are our contemporaries—strangers in a strange time—making it…