‘Running’ by Cara Hoffman
Running has plenty of dazzle; it races atop remarkable sentences. But at its core are two people who, accustomed to getting by on nothing, have no idea what to do with the bounties that befall them: success, family, love
‘Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days’ by Jeanette Winterson
For years, Winterson has written a new story every year at Christmastime, and here she collects them for the first time. The result is a book for cold, clear nights and roaring fireplaces.
‘The Gap of Time’ by Jeanette Winterson
Winterson—whose energetic literary career began with the sui generis coming-out novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and has ranged through many forms and eras since—has written a “cover version” of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale
‘Night at the Fiestas’ by Kirstin Valdez Quade
At its best, Kirstin Valdez Quade’s new collection of stories, Night at the Fiestas, sidesteps cliché but keeps the grandeur of her setting by transposing it to her characters—people big as myth, opaque as Scripture
Maggie Nelson: On Writing ‘The Argonauts’ and Doing Justice to Queer Happiness
“On one level, I tried to do something I hadn’t done before, which was use the book as a holding container for sentiments of love and happiness […]”
‘The Argonauts’ by Maggie Nelson
The Argonauts, a slim book by poet and critic Maggie Nelson, contains multitudes. It’s an appreciation of her favorite queer thinkers. It’s a chronicle of first-time motherhood. It’s also the best kind of nonfiction read, the kind that enlarges one’s reading list by half.
‘Pissing in a River’ by Lorrie Sprecher
Amanda, the narrator of Lorrie
