I discovered Lorrie Moore in the University of Georgia infirmary in 1989—that is, I found her short story “You’re Ugly, Too” in the pages of the New Yorker I was […]
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From the beginning, I knew there could be trouble: a box of cheeky new books on my doorstep, all dressed in their shiny covers, waiting to be read. All week […]
Read MoreLeslie Jamison puts her personal anguish on display in her debut book of essays, The Empathy Exams. She doesn’t shy away from the suffering of others, either. This focus on […]
Read MoreThis striking first collection explores love and loss through a series of linked poems that dramatizes the experiences of a young woman named Alice. The name of the heroine of […]
Read MoreIt’s 2014, the 100th anniversary of William Stafford’s birth, and people all over the country are celebrating his life and work. Why Stafford, I wonder, when I don’t remember so […]
Read MoreAfter reading recent books of poetry by Patricia Smith, Robert Wrigley, David Kirby, and Cathy Park Hong, one might be surprised to know that even the best of contemporary critics […]
Read MoreSylvia Plath, arguably the greatest female poet of the twentieth century, has been the object of much biographical scrutiny, the more so because her suicide at age thirty seems inextricably […]
Read MoreWhen early twenty-first-century readers imagine Mary Flannery O’Connor, they are prone to think of her as perpetually ill, wearing black-rimmed wing glasses and sitting on her porch at Andalusia, crutches […]
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