The day Sinead O’Connor died, I was at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in the swimming pool, gossiping with poet Erika Meitner about our favorite writers. The next evening, Erika read her brand-new poem “The Shape of Progress” to a small group of us. It was a beautiful tribute to the Irish singer, songwriter, and activist, which she had written the previous night.
2023 was the year things were supposed to go “back to normal.” Instead, it was the year we realized this was the new normal. 2023, the year “the ocean off the coast of Florida / reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit— / a toddler running a low fever, / the temperature of an average hot tub.” 2023 was the year the future became now.
As soon as Erika finished reading, I asked her if I could have the poem for The Commuter. This isn’t usually how poetry comes to the magazine—we reviewed over 3,000 unsolicited submissions this year, and 92% of the issues we published came from those open and free submissions. But this situation was unique.
Not only did “The Shape of Progress” go on to be The Commuter’s most-read issue of the year, at 60,000 reads, it was one of the most-read posts across Electric Literature’s entire site.
The editorial ethos of The Commuter embraces the strange, the absurd, the darkly comic. Hybrid forms, experiments, flow charts—if we love something, we do our best to find a way to overcome technical hurdles and make it work on the site. We are the home for work whose answer to “Is this too much?” is “It’s just enough.” We published 51 issues this year, including our 300th, featuring established writers like Lydia Davis, Mat Johnson, and Sam Sax—alongside not one, but four poetry and fiction debuts.
All 303 issues are available for free, and we pay all of our contributors. We’re skipping this week’s issue because of the holiday, but ask that you please consider making a donation before New Year’s to support The Commuter’s 2024 season, our sixth year of publication.
This elegy by Erika Meitner was written shortly after the news of Sinéad O’Connor’s passing and is full of the pure emotion, resonance, and gratefulness many were feeling for the life and work of Sinéad O’Connor, combined with her music’s prescience in our modern time. It is the most popular piece on Electric Literature this year!
In this graphic narrative, a daughter connects with her mother posthumously after finding an unpublished autobiography of her life in a cabinet of “tax records.”
Madeline Cash’s short fiction is a satirical, hilariously brilliant, examination of a hopeless world and what happens in the aftermath of a society forgotten by God.
In this piece of flash fiction by Kim Samek, a list writer named Ant is squeezed out of the housing market—literally. After purchasing a skinny house in the city, he struggles to make room for himself in more ways than one. This humorous short story is a surreal and sardonic commentary on the struggles the property market poses to a new generation searching for housing security.
Chosen by Anthony Doerr as the winner of the 2023 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, the flash fiction piece “Carapace” by Matthew Ryan Frankel dives into an intriguing event (and dinner plan) at a family funeral.
Residency programs provide a myriad of benefits to writers and artists: the chance to escape the pressing obligations of everyday life, to have a quiet space to work, to find inspiration in a new environment, and to draw on the cultural milieu of being surrounded by fellow artists. It’s an opportunity to turn inwards and reflect on the work in progress, a chance to grow personally and artistically.
These international programs have different criteria, costs, and application processes, listed below. Some require residents to take part in shared dinners, present talks, engage in events with the local community, or participate in a literary festival; while others emphasize solitude and productivity.
Here are 17 free or low-cost writing residencies from around the world:
Pocoapoco is a non-profit organization dedicated to experimentation, education and relation through artistic & social practices. With a focus on intercultural and interdisciplinary exchange, the program aims to generate, strengthen & connect initiatives & practices that further collective reflection, knowledge & change. Pocoapoco (Spanish for little by little) is both a name and an approach, representing the organization’s guidance from its home in Oaxaca and the global south. From September to April, Pocoapoco hosts 5-week residencies made up of international and local residents who come together to think, work, discuss and collaborate. With a focus on shared practice & dialogue, the residency works to support and connect individuals, ideas and practices catalyzing social discourse, understanding and change.
Artists and non-artists across all fields are welcome. Pocoapoco considers active observation, dialogue and reflection as essential to building new ways of coming together and creating together across locations, disciplines and practices.
Housing, studio space, and all meals are provided to residents. Sliding scale fees are offered to all accepted residents: the actual cost of each residency is $500 per week but sliding scale fees beginning at $200 week are offered for each resident. Residency fees cover minimal program costs and support for local artists and public programs. Residents are asked to pay what they are able. Sliding scale fees are offered in lieu of partial scholarships to select residents.
Cost: Sliding scale fees beginning at $200 to $500 a week
Founded in 2003 to identify talented writers from across the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds, Under the Volcano is a 2-week international residency that convenes every January in Tepoztlán, Mexico, an hour from Mexico City in the foothills of the great volcanoes. A third optional week is available to those able to stay on in the village to write. The residency program’s master classes are open to emerging and accomplished fiction writers, poets, essayists and journalists, and offer high-level feedback and mentorship from master writers. A roster of distinguished guests joins the residency’s core faculty in a program designed to take each participant’s voice to the next level. The program’s diverse, carefully curated community is recreated each year on the principles of mutual support and respect for differences of nationality, character, opinion, identity, age and life choices. The program is priced in three different currencies based on where you earn and work, and payment plans are available on request. Full Named Fellowships are also available, and cover tuition for the program, accommodation in the village, and roundtrip transportation to Mexico City from a single point of origin in either Mexico or the U.S. Fellows are responsible for their transportation to Tepoztlán and should expect to pay for their own meals except for breakfast. If needed, a modest stipend is available to fellowship recipients to cover daily expenses during the program. Limited financial aid is also offered based on applicants’ proof of their past three months of monthly income and expenses.
The non-profit Instituto Sacatar provides artists from around the world with 7- to 9-week residencies at the beachside estate on the island, to create new works within an international community of artists, many of whom explore the unique cultural heritage of Bahia, Brazil. Sacatar Foundation places creative individuals in immersive intercultural experiences at its international artist residency program. According to its website, “While we sometimes use the word ‘artist,’ we interpret ‘creativity’ in the broadest possible sense. We seek creative individuals of all disciplines and backgrounds, without regard to race, creed, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation, marital status, ancestry, disability or HIV status.” Housing, studio space, and food are provided, at no cost.
Located in the fishing village of Bogliasco near Genoa, the Bogliasco Foundation offers one-month residencies to individuals who can demonstrate notable achievement in the Arts and Humanities. Taking inspiration from the ancient port of Genoa, which has brought global travelers together throughout the ages, the Foundation strives to foster productive exchange by composing intimate groups of 8-10 residents who represent a diversity of disciplines, ages, and nationalities. During their month long stay at the Center, Bogliasco Fellows are provided with living quarters (bedroom with private bath), full board, and a workspace or separate studio, depending on the discipline. All meals are shared, and every evening, Fellows come together for a served dinner featuring typical local cuisine from the region of Liguria. Special Fellowships are also offered, some of which offer a stipend and/or travel support.
Cost: Free
Application Fee: $30 up to one week before each final deadline, then $45 from that date onward
Deadline: December 1st, 2023 for Fall 2024, and March 14th, 2024 for Spring 2025.
Located in Lake Como, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency Program offers academics, artists, policymakers, and practitioners with the opportunity to unlock their creativity and advance groundbreaking work through the completion of a specific project in a residential group setting during 4 weeks of focused time. Rather than a retreat for private reflection, the Bellagio Center Residency offers an opportunity to advance a specific breakthrough project and a stimulating environment to forge cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural connections with other residents that can strengthen their work, shift their perspectives, and spur new ideas. Those invited to apply include artists and writers, including but not limited to composers, fiction and non-fiction writers, playwrights, poets, video/filmmakers, dancers, musicians, and visual artists who share in the Foundation’s mission of promoting the well-being of humankind, and produce work that enhances our shared understanding of pressing global or social issues. Residents are provided with room and board, studio space, the opportunity to bring a partner/significant other to join the residency for all or a portion of their stay, travel funding (based on financial need), and “future participation in an international network of Bellagio Center leaders, united in the shared purpose of creating a better world.”
At the foot of the Swiss Jura Mountains, approximately 30 minutes from Lausanne and one hour from Geneva, the Jan Michalski Foundation’s residency for writers features a group of seven cabins that hang from an openwork “canopy” running above the foundation’s campus. Offering ideal conditions for writers and translators, six of these cabins provide stunning views of Lake Geneva and the Alps, while a seventh is oriented towards the forested slopes of the Jura. Residencies vary in length, from 2 weeks to 3 months, and include housing, studio space, breakfast and lunch, and a weekly stipend. Residents are also given access to the residency library and are welcome to participate in cultural activities organized by the Foundation. Writer-pairs working on a collaborative project are also welcome to apply.
Based at the Dora Maar House, the Nancy B. Negley Artists Residency Program offers residencies of one to two months to mid-career arts and humanities professionals. After serving as the summer home of the surrealist artist and photographer Dora Maar, who was once a companion and muse to Picasso, the Dora Maar House was purchased in 1997 by Nancy Brown Negley, an American arts patron who renovated the house to create a residency for writers, academics, and artists. Most of its fellows have completed and published at least one work, or have had at least one solo exhibition, or have completed a full-length film, and are professionals established in their field of expertise. The residency is free to attend and includes private bedroom and bath, private studio, roundtrip travel to and from the Dora Maar House, and a grant based on one’s length of stay.
Cost: Free
Application Fee: $25
Deadline: Applications open in February, ending in October
Founded by American artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill, the Camargo Foundation fosters creativity, research, and experimentation through its international residency program for artists, scholars, and thinkers. Located on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, the Foundation offers time and space in a contemplative and supportive environment, giving residents the freedom to think, create, and connect. The residencies are programmed either by the Foundation, as in the case of the Camargo Core Program, or in partnership. The Camargo Core Program consists of a 10-week fellowship for scholars, thinkers, and artists’ in all disciplines, and provides housing, studio space, a weekly stipend, and transportation to and from Cassis (for air travel, basic coach class booked in advance is provided). Spouses/adult partners and dependent minor children (at least six years old) are welcome to accompany fellows for short stays or for the duration of the residency. Regular project discussions give fellows the opportunity to share their work, and all Fellows are required to be present at these discussions. These project discussions serve as an opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange.
Established by Drue Heinz, the noted philanthropist and patron of the arts, the Foundation is named after Hawthornden Castle where an international residency program provides month-long retreats for creative writers from all disciplines and languages to work in peaceful surroundings. Located 7 miles from Edinburgh, Hawthornden Castle stands on an isolated rock above the gorge of the river North Esk, and is entirely surrounded by woods. As guests of the retreat, residents receive full bed and board, and have use of communal facilities including an extensive library as well as the castle garden and grounds. Though Hawthornden Castle will be closed for the entire year in 2024 to undergo extensive repairs and renovation, applications will reopen the same year for residencies in 2025.
Nawat Fes offers funded residencies of roughly two months in duration to U.S. and international creators in multiple disciplines. Hosted by the American Language Center Fes / Arabic Language Institute in Fez, a member of the American Cultural Association, this residency strives to employ artmaking as a means to cultivate understanding across cultures. Nawat Fes offers residencies in multiple disciplines, including Literature (Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, and Literary Translation); Visual and Performance Art; and Music Composition and Performance. The program also accepts artist collaboratives of up to three people. Two Nawat Fes artist residents at a time live and work in the ancient medina of Fes, which is considered one of the most extensive and best conserved historic cities of the Arab-Muslim world. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Fes medina is one of the world’s largest pedestrian zones, containing narrow alleyways leading to ancient architectural treasures, traditional houses, artisan workshops and open-air markets. The residency provides housing and a stipend. In exchange, residents will be expected to offer two opportunities for the community to engage with their work. These could be public programs such as a talk, performance, reading, lecture, workshop or concert, or an exhibition of their work during the residency. These programs are intended for local students of English and/or international students of Arabic, as well as the local community. Artists should be prepared to engage with our community in English or Arabic.
Situated in a university town in the Western Cape province, about 31 miles east of Cape Town, the STIAS Individual Fellowships aim to provide and maintain an independent “creative space for the mind” to advance the cause of science and scholarship across all disciplines. It is global in its reach and local in its African roots, and values original thinking and innovation in this context. No restriction is placed on the country of origin, discipline, or academic affiliation when STIAS considers a fellowship invitation. It encourages the cross-pollination of ideas and hence gives preference to projects that will tap into, and benefit from, a multi-disciplinary discourse while also contributing unique perspectives to such a discourse. This interaction is fostered by inviting individual fellows or project teams where each team member is evaluated individually. Under its artists-in-residence program, creative writers are welcome to apply for these semester-long fellowships. Residents receive full funding and are housed, at no cost, at the Wallenberg Research Centre, a state-of-the-art conference and research facility overlooking vineyards, gardens, and mountains.
Located at The Jamun, a spacious bungalow on a quiet, green lane, Sangam House provides 4- and 2-week residencies for writers from India and around the world who have published to some acclaim but have not yet enjoyed substantial commercial success. Sangam House seeks to give writers a chance to build a solid and influential network of personal and professional relationships that can deepen their own work. The word sangam in Sanskrit literally means “going together.” In most Indian languages, sangam has come to mean such confluences as the “flowing together of rivers” and “coincidence.” The intention of Sangam House is to bring together writers from around the world to live and work in a safe, peaceful setting, a space made necessary on many levels by the world we now live in. Residents are provided with large private bedrooms in shared living quarters, studio space, and all meals. There is no cost to attend.
Located in a converted luxury hotel along the Bund in Shanghai’s former financial district, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel artist residency invites artists from across the globe to immerse themselves in the city’s unique cultural environment while creating new work. Dancers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, writers, painters, conceptual artists, and many more creative individuals from around the world live and work in this historic landmark once known as the Palace Hotel from a period of three to six months. Accepted fellows are provided with assistance towards applying for a Chinese Business Visa (up to 300 Swiss Francs), a roundtrip economy ticket to Shanghai, accommodation, studio space, housekeeping service, and breakfast.
Cost: Free
Application Fee: 30 Swiss Francs (to be donated in full to Doctors Without Borders)
IWW is a self-funded, non-profit program supported solely by donations. Its goal is to invite writers from around the world to visit HKBU and engage in creativity-inspiring activities with local students, writers, and the Hong Kong community in general, providing opportunities for cultural exchange within and outside the university campus. Writers in residence stay on campus and interact with university students and staff, as well as with Hong Kong writers and the public. For its Writers-in-Residence Programme, a group of international writers are selected from a competitive pool of applicants each spring and invited to stay on campus for 4 weeks. Applicants must have at least one published book; currently reside outside Hong Kong; and have a functional command of English or Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese). Accommodation on the HKBU campus, roundtrip economy airfare, and a pier diem are provided.
Offered by the Centre for Stories in Perth, Western Australia, the Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship is a 9-week fellowship that is open to writers living outside Australia. It aims to support the work of talented individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to ideas and practices that foster belonging and better cross-cultural understanding. The Fellowship is open to fiction, non-fiction, poetry and short story writers who work in English and whose work is available in Australia. Applicants must have at least two full-length publications published by a trade publisher. Applicants currently enrolled in an undergraduate or postgraduate (including higher degree by research) university course are not eligible. The fellowship will take place over any nine-week period between March 2024 and July 2024.
The value of the fellowship is AUD $35,000 which will cover the following expenses: Living allowance of $15,000, accommodation will be provided for 8 weeks in Perth, return economy airfare, travel expenses and accommodation for a week in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.
Located in the beautiful Wairarapa region of New Zealand’s North Island, the New Zealand Pacific Studio is an award-winning residency program that hosts creative practitioners from Aotearoa/New Zealand and abroad. It currently operates through a network of hosts, most of whom are artists themselves, who accommodate artists-in-residence on their properties. Through the generosity of individuals and institutions in the local community, several supported residencies are offered each year—for writers, there is RAK Mason Residency, and the Ema Saiko Poetry Fellowship.
Usually 2 to 3 weeks long, these opportunities vary according to funding periods and may not be offered annually. They cover accommodation, a stipend, access to the residency library, and local transportation. Residents provide for their own meals—though there are often shared meals with hosts—and arrange for their own transportation to and from Wairarapa. Most come with the request to offer a community activity, for which the residency organizers can assist with logistics.
Run jointly by the Caselberg Trust and Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature, the Caselberg Trust Margaret Egan Cities of Literature Writers Residency aims to provide international and New Zealander writers with the opportunity to work on a substantial piece of creative writing and to foster connections among creative writers in Aotearoa/New Zealand and internationally. There are no limits in terms of genre, language, or length of writing, and completion of the project during the Residency is not a requirement. This residency is offered annually for a period of 6 weeks to writers from other UNESCO Cities of Literature and to New Zealand writers in alternating years. All residents receive a stipend of NZ$4,000, and international residents also receive up to NZ$3,000 towards travel costs. Accommodation is provided rent-free at the Caselberg House for the six-week duration of the Residency, and power and heating costs are to be met by the resident. The resident may be expected to attend Residency-related events conducted in English during the Residency period such as a welcoming evening, sponsor events, interviews, and community events related to Residency project/theme.
When compiling Recommended Reading’s most popular stories of the year, we noticed a trend. You like to read about sex—though not good sex, necessarily. The sex might be awkward or misguided, as in our most-read story by Michelle Lyn King, about a high-schooler preoccupied with the expectations of others.
Or it might be really misguided, as in A.M. Homes’s iconic story from 1986 about a sexually obsessive teenage boy who masturbates all over his sister’s Barbie doll.
Another top read by Elisa Faison actually does contain good sex—until it gets emotionally complicated, as foursomes are wont to do. Or, if you’re interested in a (sexless) take on non-monogamous relationships, consider Marne Litfin’s story about a deteriorating throuple, aka a “murder.”
I would say that sex sells, except Recommended Reading is free. We published 52 issues this year—including our 600th—on topics as wide-ranging as repressed memories, existential dread, class privilege, stalkers, lost friendships, influencers, first loves, and acid trips. Our contributors included Paul Yoon, Ann Beattie, Alexanda Chang, Yiyun Lee, Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi, and Rebecca Makkai; and our recommenders included Deesha Philyaw, Elizabeth McKracken, Fransciso Goldman, and Lauren Groff.
All. For. Free.
You can find all 606 issues of Recommended Reading on our website, representing the largest free resource for literary short fiction outside of a library system. But publishing Recommended Reading isn’t free. Please consider making a donation to our year-end fundraising campaign. We need your support as we embark on Recommended Reading’s 2024 season, its 13th year of publication.
– Halimah Marcus Editor, Recommended Reading
Here are our 10 most popular stories of the year, starting with the most read.
Michelle Lyn King’s “One-Hundred Percent Humidity” follows a teenage girl, Faith, who is trying her best to be “the kind of person who says yes to things.” Faith’s mother has recently died of breast cancer, her father is dating someone new, and her friend Callie dictates the terms of their entire friendship. She is also beginning to understand that whether people think you did something matters more than whether you actually did. King’s writing is candid and emotionally unflinching. As Wynter K. Miller writes in her introduction, “She understands that markers of maturity, like sexual experience, matter—and she is aware that the noteworthiness of her virginity depends on the behavior of others. If she hasn’t had sex yet, it matters; if she’s the only one who hasn’t had sex, it matters more.”
“A Real Doll” by A.M. Homes, recommended and revisited by A.M. Homes
In 1986, A.M. Homes wrote “A Real Doll,” a story about a teenage boy who develops an intense psychosexual relationship with his sister’s Barbie. Homes remembers when she workshopped the story at NYU, her classmates thought it was “‘psychotic’ and that it was impossible to date Barbie ‘because she didn’t have a vagina.’” The story was eventually published in Christopher Street magazine along with two other stories from her collection The Safety of Objects, and it also spawned the anthology Mondo Barbie. In honor of the release of the Barbie movie, Homes revisits her iconic short story thirty-five years later.
“Group Sex” by Elisa Faison, recommended by Wynter K. Miller
“Group Sex” opens five years into Frances and Ben’s happy marriage as they contemplate opening it up for the first time. Their entanglement with another couple, Adam and Celeste, raises unforeseen questions about queerness, nonmonogamy, and the institution of marriage. Articulating the rich interiority of its characters, “Group Sex” gives voice to the messy joys of a foursome. Rather than just sex, as Wynter K. Miller writes, this story shines a light on “loyalty and betrayal, desire and grief, obsession and love. The story asks important questions about marriage and monogamy, and somehow, it makes the asking fun.”
“Connie” by Catherine Lacey, recommended by Lauren Groff
This excerpt from Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X forms part of a biographical detective story in which X’s widow C. M. Lucca, a former journalist, attempts to uncover the true story of her wife’s life. Lauren Groff describes X as the shifty and elusive “magnetic center” of the novel: “X is a writer of fiction, a visual artist, a filmmaker, and a songwriter and producer for David Bowie; in short, a Zelig of high art.” Lucca discovers that X employed different names, identities and personalities in a dizzying spiral of deception; despite her desperate attempts to discover X’s true identity, Lucca never quite comes close, and her search only illuminates the depths of her absence.
In “Live Today Always,” Lee is a copywriter for a PR firm that represents a problematic social media influencer. The only Black person at her company, Lee is tasked with writing the influencer’s apology for saying a racial slur, forcing her to contend with the fact that she has been compromising her own values. Fluent in the language of the Internet, Jones’s voice is at once compelling and natural. As Halimah Marcus writes in her introduction, “Life online is at once ephemeral and permanent: there’s a record of what you said, but it can also be deleted.”
“Julia” by Ada Zhang, recommended by Sarah Thankam Mathews
In “Julia,” a story from Ada Zhang’s debut collection The Sorrows of Others, a thirty-two-year-old woman named Esther prepares to leave New York after ten years. She is reminded of the intense, transformative friendship she once had with a woman named Julia as well as its eventual rupture. Sarah Thankam Matthews describes Zhang’s writing as “careful, faceted, gleaming in its insight and meticulous observation, its beautiful sentences. But it is also radiant, softly glowing as if lit from within.” The Sorrows of Others is a “pristine and lovingly carved jewel box of a collection,” filled with wisdom, insight and profundity.
“Wedding Party” by Christine Sneed, recommended by Elizabeth McKenzie
Sneed’s panoramic story “Wedding Party” explores the psyches of the disparate members of a wedding: “the scars of the wife-to-be, the secret yearnings of the groom, the screw-ups of the uncle, the fury of the groom’s brother, and the gnawing voids in the lives of those attending, including a kleptomaniac sister,” as Elizabeth McKenzie writes in her introduction. “Everyone is hungry, everyone is wounded, and, as custom demands, everyone must be merry nonetheless.” Sneed’s elegant, lucid and virtuosic prose expertly navigates individual consciousness in a masterful examination of the short story form.
“Communicable” by Daphne Kalotay, recommended by Rebecca Makkai
In “Communicable,” a short story from her collection The Archivists, Daphne Kalotay uses the backdrop of the pandemic and the technology of Zoom to navigate the minefield of human relationships. She accomplishes what Rebecca Makkai describes as a remarkable feat: She uses the pandemic as an organic plot device, writing a story that could only happen in lockdown—COVID is at the very center of the story—and yet it’s all simply scaffolding to the real story, which is about people who are both pushed together and falling apart.” Like the rest of the collection, “Communicable” is witty, transcendent, uncanny and unfailingly prescient.
“The Catholics” by Chaitali Sen, recommended by Danielle Evans
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Laurie and Sharmila feel betrayed by their country and react by making uncharitable assumptions about their new neighbors. In doing so, they push back against a culture that insists they don’t belong, but risk compromising their own values in the process. This story from A New Race of Men From Heaven is atmospheric and unnerving, capturing what Danielle Evans describes as “Sen’s gift for being forthright—for finding the precise language to capture even a fleeting feeling” as well as “her gift for restraint, her willingness to leave silence on the page, to let language be the best tool we have for forging connection or understanding and still, frequently, not enough.”
“Daisies” by Marne Litfin, recommended by Halimah Marcus
On a bright sunny summer day, the narrator and their friend Miller is on a road trip from upstate New York to Philly to visit the beach. On their drive, the two friends have both heartfelt and light-hearted discussions about their gender identity, changing bodies, and failing romantic situationships. In her introduction, Halimah Marcus describes reading the story as being “invited inside that friendship, and reminded that the greatest gift in any relationship, romantic or otherwise, is the freedom of being loved while also being yourself.”
In many ways, the world Naomi Alderman portrays in her newest novel, The Future, is not so different from our own: a few tech CEOs have possession of much of the world’s wealth; headlines in the news chronicle a litany of natural disasters incited by the climate crisis; the polarizing forces of social media are very much in play; and people try to find meaning or forms of escape in different places, some of them turning to the remaining beauty of the natural world, others to survivalist message boards where they swap strategies for how to survive any apocalypse and ruminate on religious parables that carry meaning into present day.
The difference between our reality and the fictional one Alderman creates? In The Future, the world ends. And the tech billionaires, through their use of an AI survival program and their unimaginable amount of wealth, leave everyone to suffer while they take refuge in a series of secret bunkers.
Alderman brings the same propulsive prose and razor-sharp critique of our contemporary landscape that she did in her best-selling novel The Power to The Future, in which she skewers ills propagated by extreme wealth inequality. I had the opportunity to speak with Alderman over Zoom about the importance of community, the value of re-interpreting religious texts in present day, and what it looks like to maintain hope in times of deep crisis.
Jacqueline Alnes: The future, not to borrow your title, is such a rich premise for a novel. On one hand, some characters find hope and identity in the future: they spend their time imagining what’s ahead for them and work or scheme to reach those goals. For others, the future is foreboding, rife with natural disasters, pandemics, and other dangers. What was it like exploring these different perceptions?
Naomi Alderman: I have worked in technology for many years and I make games, so I often have to think about the future. In order to make an app, for example, you have to not be targeting whatever the phones are today, you have to think about what’s going to be happening four or five years from now and then try to hit that moving target. Also, I’m a fairly anxious person. Some of that conversation in the book about the future comes out of my own thinking and saying to myself, okay, maybe things are not going to be terrible. Maybe there’s a chance that things are going to be alright. It’s kind of working some hope out on the page.
I have a tendency to think it’s all going to be bad, but at the same time, working in technology, I think it’s probably going to be both good and bad, just like every other historical period. I see people talking about the book now online which is extremely exciting and fun, and I see people saying, Oh, it’s a terrifyingly real possibility and it’s a reality that just feels normal to me now.
JA: I felt like reading the book made some of what tech companies do—in terms of data or privacy—feel more real. Maybe working in tech means you have more of an ongoing awareness?
NA: On Friday, the genetic data company 23andMe announced that they had been hacked and that the hackers have released the information of all Ashkenazi Jews. I registered with that company about ten years ago. I’m an Ashkenazi Jew. God knows how that’s going to play out for me over the rest of my life. I can change everything about myself, but I can’t change my DNA.
JA: That’s horrifying.
NA: It’s a science fiction thing, except it’s really happened.
JA: Your book made me think about the capabilities of technology. Like the example of the CEOs controlling the weather so that we have no more floods or famine—what a great idea. But then, there’s this underbelly: if the wrong people have access to that power or if the wrong people co-opt it, it becomes a weapon.
NA: It’s all a tool. Every single thing that we’ve made is a tool. We could decide to use it for the benefit of all other humans and instead what we’re mostly doing is making a few dudes rich and powerful in a way that is going to send them crazy.
In my previous work I’ve thought a lot about power, and it continues to be interesting to me. My conclusion is not a novel conclusion, but I think it needs to be heard every single time: It’s not about the individual person. If you make people that powerful, they will go crazy. You look at Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg challenging each other to a cage fight, you must say to yourself that they have experienced power toxicity. It is affecting their brain functioning and the kindest thing to do would be to take quite a bit of power away from them so they can return to sanity. I guess either we do that in some sort of humane way, or at some point there’s a revolution, which I don’t think will be fun for any of us to live through.
JA: The book reveals how a fervent belief in capitalism has allowed select characters to hoard a baffling amount of wealth, power, and resources, which they hope to use to protect themselves as the world as we know it comes to an end.
NA: Did you see Sam Bankman-Fried’s brother was trying to buy an island to set up some sort of crypto-utopia? I mean, I made the stuff in my book up, but…
JA: But it’s not entirely fiction! Maybe that’s why readers are saying it’s terrifying, because it is an echo of our reality.
The kindest thing to do would be to take quite a bit of power away from [Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg] so they can return to sanity.
NA: I think we’re getting toward the end of the part when we can all be in denial about it. I have a strawberry plant on my patio here. It’s mid-October now in the UK and the strawberry plant is flowering, and that’s not normal. I think we are getting to some kind of point where people are going, What? What’s happened? on a lot of different things at once. That makes me feel quite hopeful. As long as we are awake and aware of what’s happening, we can really work to change it.
JA: In the novel, there are people who can survive because they have money—they can buy anything, but then they lack any sort of capability that would help them in the real, physical world. There’s a detachment from the reality they want to keep living in, which I thought was fascinating. What interests you about the ideas of survival?
NA: A long time ago, probably the germ of the book, was a New Yorker article about billionaires having survival bunkers, which hadn’t occurred to me until I read it. One of the things that made me stumble backwards was not that it’s just so revolting, but that I recognize it from science fiction novels that I’ve read. I thought, Oh God, it’s us. I suppose what is interesting about this particular group of extremely powerful people is that they have read a lot of science fiction and they are trying to make it happen. They’ve convinced themselves, for example, that bad AI is inevitable so they’ve got to make good AI. None of that is true, but it’s a science fiction premise and they’ve convinced themselves that the future of humanity is on other planets so instead of trying to look after this one they’re going to Mars. That’s sort of interesting.
If you think about the robber barrons of the 19th and early 20th century, they had been raised on Christianity for the most part. There was a movement to get them to use their wealth for good Christian values. Not all of that succeeded and not all of that was appropriate, but some of it involved Andrew Carnegie building public buildings. What I’m saying is the science fiction community needs to come together and give these guys some exciting sci-fi ideas about what they could do with their money, because they’re not going to be moved by religious pleas.
JA: I loved the biblical tales on the message boards in this novel, like reading about Lot as if he were a modern day man. When you read these stories in the Bible it’s always like sure, this happened, but when you re-contextualize it in the book, it made me do a double-take, like what happened?
NA: I grew up reading the Bible in Hebrew and my Aramaic is okay. Those stories are great stories. I don’t know whether you have a religious background, but I would heartily recommend the experience of telling Bible stories to people who have never heard those stories before. They come alive when they’re retold. They’re dead on the page, but when you tell somebody…I mean, if you really want a good time, tell someone the story of David, Saul, and Jonathan because that is incredibly gripping. Ages ago, I remember telling the story of Jacob and Esau to someone who had no familiarity with the Bible, and the moment I was telling it, he was like, What? What? It’s the most, in plain sight, brilliant piece of literature, but because it’s still a living part of religion it’s not taught as literature.
JA: I grew up reading the Bible but I just glossed over so much of it. It’s so condensed that I didn’t take the time to make it come alive or ask, What does that mean, actually?
NA: A lot of the translations out there gloss over it. You have to really have a good translation or be paying really close attention to figure out what’s going on. I was mentored by Margaret Atwood and one of our first conversations was swapping weird bits of the Bible. There’s a lot of weird stuff in there. There’s a bit, for example, where Moses is on his way back from the desert, where he’s seen the burning bush, and he’s coming back to Egypt. At a certain point in the story, and I swear to you this is there, he and his wife, Zipporah, are traveling overnight and their son becomes extremely ill. Zipporah takes a stone or a knife and removes the baby’s foreskin and then hurls it at Moses’s feet and shouts at him, “Behold, you are a bloody bridegroom to me.”
JA: That’s good stuff.
NA: It feels like something that had a meaning five thousand years ago, that we cannot quite winkle out of it anymore because there’s some beliefs in there that we don’t have or a reference to another story that we’ve never been told, but just looking at that on its face, you go, Okay, I get it. The baby was ill, Moses had not circumcised the baby, and she just went and did it and threw the foreskin at him, almost like, You dick. You knew that your god wanted the baby circumcised, you didn’t do it, and our baby nearly died. That’s a reading of it. There are other readings. But there’s so much in there that’s mysterious. I feel like it gets taught in a way where it’s an allegory or it’s about the relationship between God and the people, but no, it’s literature.
Respond to these stories with the part of you that knows how to respond to great writing. Reach out with your emotions, your empathy. Find what you find in it, and whatever you find in it is true for you. That’s where I am now. I have a lot of good language skills given to me by my religious upbringing and I guess I feel like I’m doing something that I would recommend to other people, which is to go back to the text, forget anything that any preacher ever taught you about it, and just have a look and see what’s there. It’s often very surprising.
JA: They are so deeply human and we are so deeply human. The context is different –– we don’t have burning bushes, necessarily –– but we do have floods and Facebook and these things that if someone read about us thousands of years from now, they might ask, What did these people do? Why did they react that way? Why aren’t people taking care of each other or the planet?
NA: Fundamentally, having worked in tech for like twenty years now, there are a lot of people who have really good values and want to do something that makes a difference. Typically, a technology company will say about itself: We’re changing the world; we’re making the world a better place. There’s a lot of disillusionment when you start working for a company like Google, whose slogan was “Don’t be evil” and then, twenty-five years later, you’re scraping people’s data and selling it to advertising companies. I think there are a lot of people working there who really do want to be doing something that makes the world better for everyone, and I hope we still have a chance to do that.
JA: It feels like we have the power and the resources and the minds.
NA: We do. There is enough food on this planet to feed everybody. We just don’t distribute it. That is a question that the logistical infrastructure of Amazon could be amazing at figuring out. Not in a crass way, working with a lot of NGOs who know how to do this, but it feels like there are a lot of brilliant people and good ideas. Capitalism isn’t necessarily doing a great job at getting the people who want to do some good stuff into the places with resources to do good stuff.
JA: I was going to say that capitalism makes us feel like we have to be out for ourselves, and does not encourage a community of care.
Part of writing this book was figuring out for myself the absolute necessity of letting other people in and making myself ask for help.
NA: I love that phrase. I grew up an Orthodox Jew. I’m not particularly religious any more, but certainly that is a world in which being a part of a community is incredibly important. I don’t hate capitalism—I think capitalism has given us some incredible things. But I really believe in a mixed system. We don’t want unfettered capitalism. Believing that will sort out all your problems is a kind of religious impulse. When people say, Oh we just have to set the market free, that’s a belief system. That’s not science. The evidence says that capitalism works for some things, communities of care work for other things, and government intervention works for some things, and NGOs work for some things. Actually, as with most other things on this planet, diversity is great. You just have to look at what a healthy, functioning ecosystem is, and it’s teeming with different things going on.
JA: There’s an interesting thread in survivalism about trust. If you open up to someone, it can be a form of connection, but the flip side is that they can betray you. How did you negotiate thinking about choosing hope while knowing that there’s betrayal possible?
NA: Secretly, that’s the theme of the book. When I was writing the book on my computer, the name of the file was “Trust.” Of course, someone else has won a Pulitzer Prize recently for a novel called Trust, so we couldn’t do that, but that is the theme: How can you possibly trust anybody? How can we do that knowing all of the terrible things that can happen and all of the bad people out there? And yet, if we don’t trust, we shrivel and die. Fundamentally, that is the Achilles heel of all of those billionaires in my novel. Becoming extremely wealthy means that you need to trust people less and less because you can get so many more of your needs met without having to ask anyone else. In the archetypical friendly street in a city, maybe you didn’t have sugar for your cake, so you went next door and asked to borrow a cup of sugar. People don’t necessarily do that very much any more because we’re wealthier than we were. The wealthier you are, the less you have to ask people things and the less you ask people for things, the less you have to discover that you can trust and rely on them. Eventually, that erodes your ability to trust. Then, you’re sunk.
I guess I’m arguing for using laundromats more and riding the bus and asking for help. I am terrible at asking for help. I think a lot of people who left a fundamentalist religion end up fiercely independent. There’s a sort of rugged individualism, certainly, in American or Western thinking. The opposite of self-branding is community. Part of writing this book was figuring out for myself the absolute necessity of letting other people in and making myself ask for help and not telling myself that I could go it all alone and do it all myself. It’s better to develop the ability to trust people. Otherwise, in the end, you have lost yourself.
JA: From exploring these ideas of the future, what would you hope readers take away? Or what did you take away? Whatever feels most true to you.
NA: Number one, I want to show my reader a good time, take them out on the town. I also hope that people who read the book come away with the feeling of: It is not too late to sort any of this out. It is not impossible to sort out the weird powers of this strange global elite that we have now. We don’t have to do it in an inhuman way, we just have to have the will to change it. It is not too late to keep so much that is really worth saving on this beautiful planet. All we need to do is want to do it.
There are a lot of ideas in the book, but one is that we are deliberately distracting ourselves because we don’t want to think about the red notices piling up in the hallway. I would like to gently say, this is your life, this is your planet, this is what your children are going to inherit, so come on now.
Even years after the fact, I am still too embarrassed to admit the identity of my first love. But I will tell you this: I wanted him to be my father, my son, my best friend, my brother. I knew his blood type, his birthmarks. What he was doing that summer on a yacht in Italy. When I am in love, he is my everything. He’s the only thing left on my TikTok fyp. He’s the reason my wallet is empty. At night, before I slip into unconsciousness, he is the last clear image in my head.
He doesn’t know I exist.
What captivates me about parasocial relationships (defined broadly as a one sided relationship, usually between an audience member and a media figure) is its reliance on distance. The intensity and want bellies on the contrast of intimacy and separation. You can spend all night watching YouTube videos of your favorite actor, influencer, etc. but, for the most part, you will never touch them. Half the love is in the longing, the desire.
When contact does occur, things get complicated.
Below are nine novels featuring parasocial relationships.
A Korean American copywriter in Berlin finds herself on a surrealist journey after a magical night at a K-pop concert, during which she witnesses the ethereal moves of star dancer Moon. Since the fated concert, she hasn’t been able to get Moon off her mind. She watches livestreams of “the boys,” attends fan get-togethers that resemble religious gatherings, and writes the titular Y/N fanfiction, which intersperses the text. When Moon abruptly retires at the height of his career, our narrator books a plane to South Korea, wandering the streets for any hint of Moon. What she wants from him, she’s not even sure herself. Y/N is simultaneously a love letter to self-insert fanfiction and a delirious, philosophical romp through the annals of the modern day entertainment industry.
Idol, Burning by Rin Usami, translated by Asa Yoneda
There are many sides to pop-culture fandom. If Y/N floats among the surreal and cerebral, Idol,Burning dives headfirst into the toxic. The novel stars high school junior Akari, an awkward, anxious teenager with an online alter ego as a Masake Ueno (member of J-pop group Maza Maza) superfan. She runs a popular online blog devoted to Masake Ueno, documents his every word in a binder, and spends all her work money on exclusive band merch. Her world is turned upside down when Masake is suddenly accused of assaulting a female fan. Desperate to make sense of her shifted landscape, Akari falls down a rabbit hole of evidence, proofs, and rumors. All too relevant, Idol,Burning digs through the aftermath of yet another celebrity downfall to unearth the trembling fans in its wake.
Remy and Alicia do not have much going for them. A pair of millennial restaurant workers trying to survive in New York City, the unhappy couple share little in common save for their obsession with Jen, a former coworker of Remy’s turned globe-trotting social media influencer. Jen is trendy, Jen is glamorous, and the couple spend their days roleplaying sexual fantasies involving Jen, who is none the wiser. When the couple accidently bump into Jen at an Apple store, they are invited on a surfing trip to Montauk, along with Jen’s wealthy boyfriend and their elite social circle. What starts as an awkward weekend of biting remarks and trauma dumping escalates into an outright horror show, as the lines fragment between fantasy and reality.
As perhaps expected of a Stephen King novel, Misery delves into the more violent, deluded potentials of parasocial relationships. Starring Paul Sheldon, a best-selling romance novelist, Misery kicks off with Paul crashing his car while drunk driving to LA. He is saved by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who is also Paul’s biggest fan. Rather than take him to the hospital, Annie takes Paul back to her home, where she holds him hostage and demands to read his unreleased work. In the ensuing months, Paul writes to satisfy Annie’s whims and is punished when he fails to appease her.
Eleanor Oliphant lives a sound and structured life: throughout the week, she works a drab but stable nine-to-five; during the weekend, she splurges on pizza and vodka. She doesn’t wear high heels. No one comes over to her apartment. Though she’s had a troubled past—a childhood accident left her with a scarred face, and college reminds her of nothing but her abusive ex—she’s perfectly fine. Sure, she may be hoarding painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with a local musician who has no idea she exists, but she’s fiiine. Only when Raymond, the strange guy from IT, walks into her life, does Eleanor consider that she may not be as okay as she thought.
Set in Seoul, Korea, If I had Your Face follows a group of young women as they navigate a landscape of increasingly impossible beauty standards. There’s Kyuri, the beauty who entertains businessmen at a room salon. Sujin, her roommate, hopes to save up enough for plastic surgery to look just like Kyuri. In another apartment, Miho, an artist, finds herself in a troubling relationship with a wealthy heir, while her roommate, Ara, obsesses over her favorite K-pop idol. There is also Wonna, a woman living below them, who has no idea how she’ll afford the pregnancy she is planning for. All together, the women paint a harsh but necessary picture of modern day Seoul.
Big Swiss is tall, blonde headed, and possesses pale blue eyes of the “cult leader variety”—or so Greta imagines. Thing is, Greta has never actually met Big Swiss. No, Big Swiss is a client of Om, the sex therapist Greta transcribes for from her bee-infested farmhouse in Hudson, New York. Her infatuation would be perfectly contained if not for the fact that, in Hudson, everyone knows everyone. It isn’t long before Greta hears a familiar voice at a dog park. What ensues is a clusterfuck of infidelity, fake identities, sex, and trauma. While many of us have come to think of parasocial relationships as residing in the realm of celebrity culture, Big Swiss reminds us that parasocial relationships can exist on a smaller, personal scale, with equally absurd effects.
Summarizing the relationships in Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan may require a corkboard, as well as some yarn and pins. There’s the unnamed narrator, a woman of color who is involved with a white, married artist simply known as “the man I want to be with.” The artist is also seeing a number of other women on the side, including “the woman I am obsessed with,” whom the narrator has never met, but is—as the name implies—obsessed with and stalks via Instagram. There is also the narrator’s unfortunate boyfriend, whom she admits to mistreating. Cutting and original, Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan critiques our obsessions with wealth and prestige via a poet’s precise prose.
Set in 1990s Brooklyn, New People follows Maria and Khalil, a soon-to-be-married biracial couple selected to star in a documentary on “new people.” Though their skin is the “same shade of beige,” Khalil is much more at ease with his identity, while Maria struggles to come to terms with hers. The couple are also at odds with their marriage—Khalil is devoted to Maria, but Maria feels lukewarm about Khalil at best. The novel takes a turn when Maria, obsessive in nature, becomes infatuated with a Black poet she’s never personally met. With what little time she’s not spending on her Jamestown Massacre dissertation, Maria is finding new, questionable ways to get closer to the poet. For a novel preoccupied with watching others, New People is nonetheless about finding oneself.
In one of Electric Lit’s most-read essays of the year, “Black Women Are Being Erased From Book Publishing,” Jennifer Baker examines the publishing industry in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. She holds the publishing industry accountable for appointing high-profile Black women to powerful positions, only to see many of those same women depart those positions within a year or two. She also reveals the pain of her own dismissal from Amistad Books in 2022, when she was told her position as a senior editor had been eliminated.
Editors work behind the scenes, but their impact is enduring, and widely felt. Editors influence who gets published, and how their work is ushered into the world. In her essay, Baker writes about having done that work, and feeling erased from the record. The impact of Black women in publishing, she argues, is slowly being rendered invisible. She asks a key question: “If you don’t exist, how can you even begin to tell your own story?”
By now you know that Electric Literature is committed to publishing writers who tell stories that need to be told. Whether by soliciting work from emerging and underrepresented authors, working with a writer on in-depth, developmental edits, or creating new opportunities for authors to submit work, everything we do is geared toward supporting writers by providing a home for their most vital stories.
At Electric Literature, helping writers tell their stories is our story. We take immense pride in guiding our writers through the editorial process, compensating them, and presenting their work to millions of readers, online, for free.
But publishing Electric Literature isn’t free; supporting writers isn’t free. Please consider making a donation to support Electric Literature, so we can keep telling the stories that most need to be told.
Denne Michele Norris Editor-in-chief of Electric Literature
Here are the most popular posts of the year by category, starting with the most read:
These warm and fuzzy whodunnits are perfect for fans of Midsomer Murders and Only Murders in the Building.
“Some might think of cozy mysteries as edgeless and old-fashioned, but that’s only the case if you want it to be. To my mind, the genre feels like a metaphorical warm blanket around the shoulders. Though the detective will be out to solve a murder, there’s usually (but not always) less gore on the page, and while I’ve used the word “detective,” a cozy crime is most often solved by an enterprising member of the public.”
Not all authors are as prolific as Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates. This list is proof that it can take decades for even the most acclaimed writers to produce their next work:
“The last few months have been an exciting time in the world of publishing, not only for the litany of debut novel and short story collection releases, but also for the publication of two long gestating, highly anticipated projects by Cormac McCarthy and Katherine Dunn.”
Improving your writing doesn’t have to be a daunting task.
“Whether you are an aspiring writer, a Pulitzer-Prize winning memoirist, or a curious reader, these books on craft will change you and the way you think about the world—as well as literature—within the complex confines of beauty and truth.”
“Showtime’s Yellowjackets was the unlikely sleeper hit of 2021 with its dark, off-kilter narrative and female characters who are messy, deeply flawed (and sometimes just downright sinister)… The second season of Yellowjackets was even darker than the first.”
These contemporary works of fiction weave in fairy tales to subvert what we take for granted as normal:
“Imagine the dark forest set on a planet mostly destroyed by climate change, the magic mirror in a story of race and identity, or that enchanted sleep in a tale about the unrelenting passage of time. Suddenly, these age-old fairy-tale objects are speaking to us about our real world, showing us how very odd it all is.”
Claire Hodgdon writes about Apple TV’s Shrinking and the reality of being raised by a grieving single father:
“I have watched countless movies and shows that include a dead mother. Shrinking, though, is about the single dad that is left when a mom dies. It is about the parent who is still there, not the one who is gone. The trying-but-failing Jimmy is sometimes so recognizable to me I can’t watch. Jimmy wants to be a good dad more than he acts like one. He fumbles, and he betrays, and he is selfish, and—he tries.”
George Harrison went from chief villain to unlikely hero in Kavita Das’s story of how Indian music came to the West.
“Why had George undertaken this grand endeavor of a cross-cultural tour, the likes of which had never been attempted before, putting his own musical reputation and resources at stake, if not to promote Indian music and musicians and to demonstrate the power of musical collaboration?”
Rebecca Woodward’s parents raised her as a Jehovah’s Witness. Decades later as an adult, she sees parallels between her escape from the religion and Prince Harry’s separation from the royal family.
“Like life in the royal family, Witness life was full of ever-shifting rules that often made little sense, but obedience to the men God had chosen to lead his organization was mandatory. In Spare, Harry is often as mystified by the arbitrary rules that dictated his life as I had been. Obedience, it seemed, was the only point for both of us.”
Jennifer Baker, a former acquisitions editor, saw her experience working at a Big 4 publishing house reflected in The Other Black Girl. The novel written by Zakiya Dalila-Harris tells a tried and true story of the challenges faced by Black professionals in the book world.
“Exclusion begins with erasure. Because if you don’t exist, how can you even attempt to tell your own story?… Being the only, or one of the few, is an unenviable position no matter the situation or occupation.”
For Benjamin Schaefer, embracing disappointment is healthier than resenting another writer for their achievements.
“It’s discouraging to see the thing we want, to be so close to it we can almost touch it, and then to be told it isn’t for us, not yet, maybe never. It resonates in the body…
How do we feel disappointment without avoiding it or offloading it onto someone else? Without giving in to the story about how we’ve once again overestimated ourselves or the value of our work? Without perceiving disappointment—and, by extension, desire—as a threat to our well-being?”
Lucy McKeon talks to Emmanuel Iduma about his memoir I Am Still with You and his return to Nigeria in search of the uncle he never knew.
“It was clear to me while I wrote the book that the real failure of imagination would be to avoid a reckoning with the histories that led, in part, to the protests. My sense is that political reckonings are cyclic in nature—an event sparks a reaction, a reaction leads to a flashpoint, again and again.”
Summer Farah talks to J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado about how Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games came together.
“We were curious what people would have to say about how games fit creatively in writers’ lives. How do video games fit into a creative practice—or, do they?”
Chelsea Davis asks Kelly Link why we’re drawn to folk tales and how superstitions shape stories.
“The patterns of fairy tales are so recognizable that introducing even the smallest piece of those patterns—’once upon a time,’ for example—means the language of the story that follows becomes charged. Readers will pay closer attention to the appearance of animals (talking or not), or colors, or, say, repetitions of three.”
In this roundtable discussion moderated by Summer Farah, Samah Fadil, Priscilla Wathington, and Rasha Abdulhadi talk about countering Zionist propaganda and mobilizing art into action.
“Literature can set the stage for the attempted annihilation of a people, and it is our responsibility to point to it. How often have I chosen a slow death in service of comfort? The truth is, I have never been able to look around a room and not see the genocidal escalation to come—if the vitriolic disregard for human life, for Palestinian life, did not permeate through to our most mundane of activities, over 18,000 Palestinians would not have been killed in the past 67 days, over 1.5 million would not be displaced from Gaza.”
—Summer Farah
The Misfits
(Articles That Didn’t Fit Into Any Other Categories)
Looking to get away to a quiet space to focus on your writing without any distractions? In this newly updated article, Monica Macansantos recommends free or affordable 20 residency programs across America.
“I was a young MFA student when I attended my first artists’ residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. I had heard of these places nestled in the woods or in small-town America where writers and artists were provided with a private bedroom and studio space, as well as meals or a meal allowance, with the only expectation that they spent the majority of their time working on their art.”
Claudia Guthrie has the deets on the literary adaptations that we can’t wait to watch in the new year.
“From classics like The Godfather and Jaws to modern marvels like Game of Thrones and Crazy Rich Asians, many of history’s greatest films and TV shows began as novels. A well-written book provides the ultimate Hollywood source material, with complex characters and an engrossing plot that, when read, already plays like a movie in your head.”
Laura Schmitt writes about the book podcasts you should be listening to.
“Whether you’re a die-hard bibliophile in search of your next read, a writer seeking some inspiration for your work-in-progress, or simply someone who enjoys the soothing cadence of spoken words, there’s a literary podcast for you.”
Samantha Paige Rosen recommends newsletters that offer the best of craft andpublishing advice,writing prompts, pitch calls,and encouragement andcommiseration about the writing life.
“Email newsletters can offer emotional support, tips and exercises for improving craft, and resources for getting published that might otherwise be inaccessible, especially to writers beginning their careers.”
Bradley Sides shares his top contenders for the most prestigious award of American literature. Spoiler alert: he was right! Well… half right, since there were two winners this year for Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
“No matter how difficult it might be to figure out the year’s winner ahead of time, it’s still fun. It’s a way to reflect back on the literary year that was—and to uncover those works of fiction that might’ve been missed when they were released.
In shaping my predictions, previous awards, critical acclaim, general buzz, and a little bit of plain intuition are the top factors that I focus on.”
Novelist R.O. Kwon’s annual list of the most anticipated books by women of color is a perennial favorite of Electric Literature readers:
“Finding these books has become, in the last seven years, less difficult, and I continue to hope that American letters will become so inclusive this effort will become obsolete. But we’re still far from that point. I’ll keep hoping.”
Novelist Michelle Hart highlights the new and forthcoming queer books of each season:
“This is what queer art specifically does: it shows us that we have always been here and we always will be. Queer stories, like the ones listed below, do more than shine light on the shadows. They are the light in the shadows. They are living documents of our lives.”
From summer to fall, fiction writer Wendy J. Fox recommends literary gems by indie publishing houses that should be on every reader’s TBR:
“What’s thrilling about the books coming out from small presses is the breadth of range—there are intentional and accidental murders, family drama and polycules, medical calamity, geopolitics, and a whole lot of finding one’s way through it all. It’s a marvelous time to be a reader.”
Each season, Laura Schmitt—a former bookseller at The Bookshop in Nashville—asks independent booksellers across America about the books they love:
“What lead titles live up to their hype? Who are the debut authors you won’t want to miss? Which literary novel will speak to your very specific brand of autumn ennui? There’s a lot to consider when it comes, but luckily indie booksellers have read like mad and are here to provide some guidance via their thoughtful and thorough recommendations.”
Irish American editor Lucie Shelly brings her literary expertise across the pond with her recommendation of the best new novels from Ireland:
“With the blue-eyed boy Paul Mescal as an avatar of young Irish men, global audiences have come to see unflattering GAA shorts and emotional suppression as attractive. Mescal’s breakthrough was of course in the Rooney Toons, and who knows, maybe that show was the start of the most recent wave of Irish prominence in pop culture. But when it comes to literature, Ireland has always been a powerhouse.”
Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Housemates, the highly-anticipated debut novel by Emma Copley Eisenberg, which will be published by Hogarth on May 28th, 2024. You can pre-order your copyhere.
When Bernie answers Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two find themselves caught in an intense and unique friendship—for which art and artmaking are cornerstones. Bernie, a photographer, and Leah, a writer, share a drive to capture the world around them.
When Bernie’s former photography professor—the renowned, yet drenched in scandal Daniel Dunn, dies—leaving her an inheritance, Leah accompanies Bernie on the road trip through America’s heartland, rural Pennsylvania, where they attempt to document the country through words and photographs.
As Bernie and Leah chase everything—their own ideas, dreams, and answers to their questions—they come into contact and conversation with people from every corner of life. Along the way, they begin to reach for the limits of their capabilities, both romantically and artistically.
“As a queer designer, it was so exciting to work with a queer author dedicated to an authentic portrayal of queer life,” says Buckley. “I enjoyed making something that felt true to my experiences, and those of the characters in Housemates.”
Eisenberg agrees, noting that the cover feels like a love letter celebrating queerness, artmaking, and the book’s West Philadelphia setting. “I was hoping for a cover that conjured a feeling of being both close and far at the same time, home and away at the same time, together and alone at the same time, and this cover simply NAILS that twoness. The novel is about falling in romantic love and art love with your housemate (queer chaos!), about figuring out how to relate to the artists that came before you, and how to live in hyper close proximity to other people, so I love the way that the bright colors and graphic shape suggest the openness of the road while the blue houses suggest the joyful claustrophobia of the Philly neighborhood where the book is set.”
At a private Quaker high school in New York City, one year post-9/11, Fay and Nell have grown so close that they narrate their lives in unison, as F&N. F&N do everything together: they sip their matching caramel Frappuccinos; IM late into the night despite seeing one another all day at school and hanging out after; audition for shared roles in theater productions; speculate on peers’ queerness; and write secret fan fiction (or Faunfic, as they term it in their shared language) about a pair of boys at their school, Theo and Christopher, the nature of whose relationship remains an intriguing mystery to them. As F&N attempt to unspool what kind of intimacy exists between Theo and Christopher, they also do the same between themselves, and eventually are forced to confront how much—or how little—they know about one another.
Alternating between chapters narrated by F&N as a unit during their high school years and separate chapters from Fay and Nell fifteen years later, James Frankie Thomas’s debut novel Idlewild focuses not only on the way a seemingly inseparable pair has the potential to fracture, but also who we become by reflecting on our past selves and the friendships that shape us.
I spoke with Thomas via Zoom about uncategorizable relationships, being a theater kid, and perceptions versus reality.
Jacqueline Alnes: I love how your novel perfectly captures so many feelings that seem specific to high school: the angst, the sometimes clumsy but earnest attempts to navigate identity, the fierce attachments that seem like they’ll never come to an end. What intrigues you about this age?
James Frankie Thomas: It’s interesting that you use the word ‘angst.’ It reminds me that one of the trade reviews of my book invoked the word ‘hormones’ when talking about my book. Obviously, as a transexual, I have a charged relationship to the word ‘hormones’ but I do feel like hormones and angst go together as go-to cliches we reach for when we talk about how teenagers experience feelings. One thing I really worked at when I was inhabiting the minds of my teen characters was I really wanted to take their emotions seriously because I don’t actually think I believe that the emotions we experience as teens are less real or less justified than the emotions we experience as adults. I say this today, when I will inject myself with hormones, which will affect my perceived reality and feelings, but I guess that’s why I’ve been thinking about the relationship between adolescence, hormones, and intensity of feeling more frequently.
I wish I could cite this, but I saw a really interesting argument on Twitter responding to someone saying that the TV show Euphoria should be set in college instead of high school. Someone responded that you could never have a show like Euphoria set in college because the very nature of high school is that you are thrown together with a lot of other random people your age for eight hours a day, every day. You can’t get away from them, you are inevitably going to have conflicts with them, and you have to see them every day in spite of your conflicts. Of course factions are going to form. You’re going to have social hierarchies, drama, sexual intrigue. That is what makes high school such a rich premise for fiction and why we all have such intense memories from high school. We were thrown together with peers at a very unformed time in our lives so maybe our impulse control isn’t the best, maybe we’re not the best versions of ourselves that we’re going to be yet, but we just have to show up every single day and see these people and live our lives surrounded by each other. In this way, high school is just the dialed up version of the rest of your life.
JA: Fay and Nell are so attached that they almost become one entity, and refer to themselves as such: F&N. What did writing this book reveal to you about intimacy in friendships?
JFT: Intimacy in friendships really is the prime subject of this novel, but I didn’t consciously know this for a long time. I’m most interested in relationships that don’t fall into easily identifiable categories. When I look at the book now, every single relationship is one that cannot be neatly defined. Obviously you have Fay and Nell, or F&N, who are not a couple, but they’re also not-not a couple. You have that mirrored in Theo and Christopher—like who knows what their deal is. You have the intense, magnetic draw between Fay and Theo, but it would not be accurate to say that there’s sexual or romantic tension between them. I mean, there kind of is, but neither of them is thinking of it that way, and that’s not the solution to what’s going on between the two of them.
I think the only question that I find interesting enough to sustain for an entire novel is: What is the deal with the relationship between these two people? I think I’m exploring that in many, many different directions. I just love uncategorizable relationships.
JA: There is so much challenge wrestling with identity at that age and also in adulthood, maybe just all the time being like: Who am I? What am I? What is this relationship? What am I doing? How much of that comes from the language we have or don’t have to talk about relationships?
JFT: It’s interesting you bring that up. Again, to bring up the trade reviews, the word ‘identity’ comes up a lot and even the phrase ‘wrestling with identity.’ Maybe you could push back on this, but I actually feel like my characters do not spend that much time wrestling with their identity. That might be something that readers project onto the book because they recognize that there is identity happening here, especially with the character Fay. I don’t think Fay actually spends that much time on the page wrestling with identity. She wrestles with a lot of things, like physically wrestling for a lot of the book. I wonder if, when we say these teen characters are wrestling with identity, what we are actually saying is that we have more vocabulary for identity now and this lack, as you put it, this lack of labels and categories for identities is so apparent on the page. Maybe that’s what’s actually happening, is this lack of wrestling because there’s just not enough words to grapple with.
JA: Maybe ‘wrestling’ is too violent of a word. I’m thinking of the scene where Fay says, “I left the Meetinghouse Loft, or rather my body did, a body from which I found myself vertiginously untethered.” She’s very self-assured and knows herself in so many ways, but the moments of violence in the book are the only ones where it seems like she is in her body, experiencing herself fully.
JFT: I always try really hard to be in my characters’ bodies and experience what my characters are experiencing. With Fay it’s a little tricky because I think I, as the author, am more in her body than she is.
JA: This book made me think so much about growth and how much pressure we put on people to navigate life stages in a uniform way. I tell my students all the time how wild I think it is that people are expected to pick a college when they’re seventeen and know then what they want to major in or “be.” Nell views college with hope for who she might be where Fay struggles to see a future for herself. Do you think these pressures to make choices at certain points in our life make organic growth difficult in that it’s difficult to veer from what’s seen as the norm?
JFT: This is such a great point you bring up, and there are different levels to my answer. On the most surface level, I cannot possibly agree with you more—it’s so unconscionably stupid that we expect seventeen-year-olds to commit to a life path. It actually took me several drafts to decide on a life path for Fay and Nell. I think I changed Nell’s college major like seven times. It’s so random, it’s so arbitrary. On one level, when Fay is unable to visualize a future for herself, she’s partly just very rationally reacting to the insanity of that.
The novel is about projections, and projecting onto people what you want to see in them or what you want to feel in yourself.
That was not precisely autobiographical for me because I was constantly fantasizing about my future but I, like Fay, was resistant to the college application process. One thing I took from myself when I was writing this storyline for Fay is the way I thought about my future was just a different side of the coin: I was purely fantasizing. There was no realistic planning. I thought a lot about being a celebrity, being interviewed, being on Broadway. These are not actual career plans. You could take steps to make this happen. You could go to acting school but I didn’t want to go to acting school. I didn’t even want to go to auditions. I just wanted these things to happen to me; I still do. Fay does not have this fantasy life to distract her from the fact that she has trouble envisioning a future for herself but I think what we have in common is not actually being in the moment, not wanting to exist right now as a person going to school, surrounded by peers, making day to day decisions about the kind of person you want to be and becoming the kind of person that you’re growing up into. Fay and I were both highly resistant to the path that life had put us on.
I don’t think this is necessarily a trans thing, because I’m sure there are many trans people out there who were very excited to go to college and very excited to choose a major. Lest I overgeneralize here, all I can say is that’s how I reacted to the idea of going to college at the age of seventeen and it’s how Fay reacts too. I do highly recommend going to college in your late twenties, which is what I did. It’s so much better to go to college when you have experienced the workforce and you can just experience the pleasure of being asked to read all day. I appreciated every second of it.
JA: Can we talk about the theater aspect of this novel? I’m not a theater kid, but something that I found interesting is the way these characters read their characters and have a grasp of who they are. They say: this is what I’m bringing to the character, this is what I’m doing. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the relationship between this ability to perform and this ability also to feel at home in yourself.
JFT: I’m amazed you’re not a theater person because that’s such a well-observed observation. A passage early on that I’ve always been kind of proud of is when the cast is having their first read-through of Othello and before they do the read-through, the drama teacher has the leads go around and describe their characters. I don’t make a big deal of it, but if you look at what all of the characters are saying, they are actually describing themselves. I don’t even know if I did this intentionally, but when it’s Fay’s turn, she says that the main thing about Iago is that he’s a gay man but he’s not allowed to be one.
One thing I love about high school theater is it’s so rare that high schoolers are allowed to express a big emotion in front of everybody. I fell in love with high school theater when I was in the ninth grade and I was not in the fall play, I was only an audience member. I went to the high school production of The Winter’s Tale. The boy playing King Leontes, when he finds out his wife wasn’t cheating on him and he had her executed for no reason, just broke down crying, like tears streaming down his face. A boy crying, in front of everybody, in front of teachers, classmates, everybody, just letting loose on stage. It’s possible he was not actually giving a good performance, he might have been hamming it up too much, but it was incredible for ninth grade me to see. And also, all the other cast members behind him were crying too. I found out later that a lot of them were doing the Burt’s Bees trick. It just rocked my world to see my classmates crying in front of everybody. I went back and saw the play again the next night.
When you’re in high school, the most impressive thing is that bravery, that emotional courage to just show your deep feelings. When you are an adult and acting professionally, that’s not the most important thing about being an actor, and I think when we see bad actors as adults is that they are hamming it up too much or showing too many feelings, rather than realistically showing how a character might try to hold back their feelings. But in high school, that doesn’t matter. It’s about having the courage to put it all out there.
JA: When you were talking about uncategorizable relationships, I couldn’t help but think of friendship breakups, and how I don’t think we talk enough about what happens at the end of things when it’s not a romantic relationship. I wondered what you learned from writing the end of this friendship, like this grieving of a person who’s still very much alive, still out there living their life, but without you.
JFT: I can’t remember when he said this, but I think it was my friend Danny Lavery who said once that it’s become almost a platitude that we never talk about friend breakups. People are always saying, “We never talk about friend breakups, we have no books about them, we have no vocabulary to talk about them.” And he said, is it possible that we’ve said this so much that it’s no longer true? Can we talk about friend breakups without saying we never talk about friend breakups?
JA: True.
JFT: That said, it is still very interesting to me. I’ve actually been hearing a lot from readers who reach out to me and say that this book made them think about their best friend from high school. It surprised me, because I didn’t set out to depict what I thought was a universal type of relationship. I thought that Fay and Nell were an unusual enough relationship that I could spend a whole novel exploring them. I guess it is more common than I thought, especially for queer people, to have one intense friendship during adolescence that eventually falls apart or ends in a weird way. I did sort of get at something that doesn’t get talked about very much.
The very nature of high school is that you are thrown together with random people for eight hours a day. You can’t get away from them, and you have to see them every day in spite of your conflicts.
I want to quote a friend of mine who also said she was reminded of a former, intense friendship while reading my book. She said she was reminded how, just like Fay and Nell, she and her friend were just in constant communication, all day long, that she wonders now what did we talk about? They were talking on the phone, IMing, seeing each other at school, and she wonders: What were we even doing? We didn’t have memes to text to each other or links to send to each other. What in the world could we have found to occupy all those hours of talk?
This is the interesting thing that she said, which is: I think we were just using each other as a kind of repository for whatever random thought came into our head. We would dislodge random thoughts by telling them to each other. In retrospect, this was a very selfish form of intimacy because we weren’t really hearing each other, we were just using each other as a sounding board. She said, I think this is why the friendship didn’t last, because once the circumstances changed and once things got difficult or there was conflict between us, there was actually no intimacy to draw on. We had been talking at each other for several years, and we didn’t truly know each other. We didn’t have a deep emotional understanding of each other. I love that my friend observed that, because I think it’s one of the takeaways of Idlewild, it’s something that both Fay and Nell are grappling with at the end: Did we ever really know each other?
JA: Something that’s been coming up throughout our conversation is what we impose on something rather than what’s actually there. I don’t know if it’s the age of the characters or that it’s this heightened era, but I think there’s something where you get to bring a part of yourself to this friendship, the same way that these characters see past each other.
JFT: I actually love that you say that. The novel is about projections, and projecting onto people what you want to see in them or what you want to feel in yourself and I never do resolve the question of how much we know about them is a projection and how much is real.
“There are rules for contemporary literature, and I’m breaking a lot of them for a lot of people,” filmmaker Anna Biller told me by phone. Her debut novel, Bluebeard’s Castle, rejects the minimalism that recent fiction sometimes conflates with seriousness: nowhere, here, will you find the anesthetized protagonist, the dead-end job, the lukewarm relationships, or the “cool first person” tone used of late to capture the alienation of the modern subject. Instead, Biller’s book embraces excess from cover to literal cover. Its heroine Judith’s feelings are almost as enormous as the gowns she wears to breakfast and the English castle she buys on a whim with her hunky but probably evil lover. Costume balls are thrown. Daggers are wielded. And just look at that cover!
In reviving the delicious manias of 18th-century Gothic novels and 1960s dime-store romances, Bluebeard’s Castle pays homage to genres that were often (and often pejoratively) associated with female readerships in their day. Indeed, the pleasures and perils of womanhood have always been the twin obsessions of Biller’s oeuvre. As a filmmaker, she painstakingly recreates the dreamy costumes, sets, and cinematography of bygone eras, from ‘60s Hollywood (The Love Witch) to the sexploitation movies and mags of the ‘70s (Viva). The result is a gorgeous, distinctly female gaze—but one unafraid to depict the mainstays of women’s suffering, from objectification to assault.
Even against that backdrop, Bluebeard’s Castle is Biller’s darkest work to date. Her reimagination of the French fairytale follows modern-day mystery author Judith as she falls hard for Gavin, a member of the peerage who promises her the world. But once they marry, Gavin’s charms sour, his worsening acts of cruelty seeming to channel the femicidal history of the medieval estate they call home. As Judith begins to fear for her sanity—and her life—Bluebeard’s Castle indicts a society that dares to call itself modern while violence against women remains routine.
Chelsea Davis: The Bluebeard legend is hundreds of years old. I was curious what attracted you to using it as the blueprint for a novel set in the present.
Anna Biller: It was actually a tragedy that happened to somebody that I know who got involved with a very, very bad man. And her life ended.
I was thinking about all the research on how many women are killed by their partners today—it’s such a high number. There was a story last year about a couple that went hiking. The woman went missing and they did this big search for her. When they combed the woods for her body, they found four more bodies that they weren’t even looking for. Their killers were all their boyfriends and husbands.
Growing up, I was always really interested in fairytales, and in the connection between the Bluebeard fairytale and the modern serial killer thriller. The Bluebeard stories were originally from the point of view of the woman, and it was only maybe in the ‘60s that it shifted, especially in movies. Suddenly, the point of view is all from that of the killer—especially in the Giallo films, like those of Mario Bava, and then in Hollywood films. It became very, very sadistic, and that’s still what we have: it’s the slasher, or the thriller. They say these movies are feminist, because there’s one woman who survived at the end, but in those older movies, you didn’t have to see a bunch of your friends be brutally murdered. I don’t think that’s a happy ending.
So that’s all in the book.
CD: What you’re saying is that femicide is still the status quo, not the exception. We’d like to think of extreme violence against women as being a thing of the past, but it’s not.
AB: That’s partly why I wanted to set my book in the modern age: I don’t want people to think “Oh, this is how it was in the 1950s or the ‘40s.” That lets us off the hook.
People also think of feminine women as dated, of femininity as being out of fashion. But I see more and more young women who really want to doll themselves up. They’re not doing it for a man; usually they’re doing it for fun with their friends, or to make themselves feel good. It’s in pop culture, it’s in music video culture, it’s on TikTok, but it’s still not in recent movies or books.
CD: I wanted to ask you about feminine fantasy more broadly. You’re so committed to a traditionally feminine aesthetic in your films, and now also in this novel: the lavish clothing, the sweet food, the hunky man. And each of these pleasures is actually really fun to read about. But they also end up having a dark side—the sugar crash after the desserts, or the man who ends up being, you know, completely evil. Do you think that women’s fantasy is doomed to endanger us?
AB: No, I don’t think it’s always doomed to endanger us. But do I think the Gothic is about women being entombed within a castle that’s owned by a man, under his rules and regulations. So, the Gothic is about being imprisoned within patriarchy, and about the woman either making peace with that, or escaping it. That’s why those old-style novel covers are so evocative—the kind of cover that I copied with my book jacket, which shows the woman fleeing from the castle. It already tells the whole story, that cover: she’s fleeing from this wealth, this security, this pleasure, this dark fantasy that’s exciting. The man means pleasure, but he also means control. Are you willing to play the role of the little perfect doll to a man, and have all the money, have all the pleasure—but also be under his control? Or do you want independence, which could also mean poverty and loneliness?
Jane Eyre is a perfect example of that. Jane can go back to the castle in the end and be with Rochester because he’s maimed and blind, and therefore, they’re equal. He doesn’t have power over her because he has to depend on her to be his eyes. But if he weren’t maimed and blind, well, she couldn’t stay there with him because he’d continue to dominate her.
CD: Like he does to Bertha.
The Gothic is about being imprisoned within patriarchy, and about the woman either making peace with that, or escaping it.
AB: Exactly. And that’s why Wide Sargasso Sea was so breathtaking for me. What that novel does is also what I was interested in doing: talking about the wife before the last wife. In the original Bluebeard fairy tale, the main character does survive. But what about the other wives, the wives that were forgotten?
CD: You have a line like that in Bluebeard’s Castle: “[Judith] always thought about characters you weren’t supposed to think about: the girls and women who are murdered in slasher films, rather than the final girl.”
AB: I like to do this obnoxious thing where I directly put my theories and ideas in the text. I know that irritates people, but that’s one reason I made Judith a writer. So she could be someone who thinks analytically like I do.
That’s also part of why Bluebeard’s Castle has so much intertextuality, so many references to other Gothic novels and films. When I’m writing screenplays, too, I’m always thinking, “What does this have to do with other works?”
CD: Do you think that having written a novel now will change how you approach writing screenplays and directing?
AB:Bluebeard’s Castle started as a screenplay. I was trying to get it made as a movie, but couldn’t get it made before the pandemic. So now the movie, if it gets made, is going to really feel like it was adapted from a novel. And if I have time, I would love to actually write a little novella of the screenplay that I’m going to make into a movie now [The Face of Horror], which is in pre-production. Charlie Chaplin wrote novels for his later movies, like Limelight. I think it’s a really good practice, because it gets you to know your characters better. And then it’s more like a memory that you lived, and you can just take the best fragments of it for the movie.
For instance, dialogue always has to be really short when you write a screenplay, because the audience gets bored and they don’t like long scenes. But with a novel, the actors can read the novel and know the rest of the dialogue because they read the book. And that informs the performance. The screenplay didn’t have a ghost either.
CD: Why did you decide to add a ghost to the novel?
In the original Bluebeard fairy tale, the main character does survive. But what about the other wives, the wives that were forgotten?
AB: I was trying to make the novel as Gothic as possible, and I was reading a hilarious article in the Guardian about what makes books Gothic. There was this whole checklist: you have to have a decrepit castle in the middle of nowhere, and this is how the villain has to be, and there has to be a ghost or monster.
CD: I do think the Gothic lends itself to the checklist approach in a way that not every genre does.
AB: Oh, definitely. The very first Gothic novel, Castle of Otranto, was already a pastiche of medieval romances, very tongue-in-cheek. And with a pastiche genre, it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to take these elements from this genre, elements from the past that already seem really quaint and outdated, and then redo them for a new audience and just have a lot of fun.”
CD: The Gothic is often about working through our relationship with the past, that backwards glance.
AB: Yes, like, “Ooh, look at how things were a couple hundred years ago—it’s so spooky because it’s the past; the castles were darker, and people were more cruel.” Now, we don’t really have the Gothic anymore as a genre; instead, we have horror and we have romance.
CD: And the Gothic, because of its melodrama, did give us access to something that the “literary fiction” as a genre or prestige category doesn’t always, which is heightened emotion, and taboo subjects.
AB: Yeah, well, maybe they’re actually closer to the fairytale and the folktale in that sense, right? Because the fairytale and folktale are all about repeating these motifs that have become like memes in the culture. Things like the Bluebeard story were invented way before [Charles] Perrault—they were old wives’ tales, they were told by the fire, and then Grimm and Perrault just wrote them down. So I think that the Gothic’s a little bit like that—this group of cliches and stereotypes that can be new each time it’s told by a different person. I work that way in my films too: I’m always trying to reference other movies and other eras of filmmaking. It’s like telling a story that’s also about all the other times it’s been told. I read a really fascinating book calledWhy Fairytales Stick by Jack Zipes, and it was about how certain stories get retold over hundreds or thousands of years because they’ve got something in them that is important for people to remember or understand.
CD: Some of the social dynamics that were happening then, hundreds of years ago, are still happening now, to some extent. Children are still in danger. Women are still in danger.
AB: People are still dealing with death and neglect and abuse and rape.
CD: Does your book have a pedagogical goal, in that sense?
I hope that my book shows people how to have empathy for somebody in [an abusive] situation.
AB: A few years ago, when a woman was raped, everybody said it was her fault. And now we don’t think that anymore. We’ve actually changed our consciousness as a culture to realize she wasn’t “asking for it.” But we still have the same attitude towards victims of domestic violence: “She was asking for it. If she was smarter, she would have gotten out.” We think that there’s something incredibly wrong with them that they would have stayed with someone abusive. So, I hope that my book shows people how to have empathy for somebody in that situation.
But also, in terms of victims themselves, two women have already told me that they left their abusive partners after reading my book. One woman had been with her husband for fifteen years, and the other had been with her partner for five years. They both told me the same thing: “I realized I wasn’t safe.” One of the women had a child and two cats that she’s very protective of. And she said that what made her realize she had to leave was that she wasn’t just putting herself in danger, she was putting her cats and her child in danger.
CD: Right, there’s specifically a part in the novel where Gavin becomes a threat to Judith’s cat, Romeo.
AB: You keep excusing [an abusive partner]; you keep taking him back. And I guess these two readers saw themselves in Judith, and they realized, “Okay, I’m doing this, too, and that’s not what I want to be doing anymore.” You also realize that a man like that isn’t going to change, that he’s never going to be how you want him to be.
And I think when the book switches into Gavin’s point of view is when it gets really, really scary. That’s the one part of the book that doesn’t read like a Bronte or like a Gothic—it reads like a contemporary thriller. I did that on purpose, made the language much more direct and plain and contemporary. It’s not the highly feminine writing style of the rest of the book; it’s authoritative, it’s the mainstream style that we accept as normal and fine. But that’s also the really appalling chapter, right? So I wanted to contrast that chapter with the rest of this book so that it seems as obscene as it is.
CD: I thought it was interesting that in the novel-within-a-novel that Judith is writing about Bluebeard, her protagonist gets a different ending from the one that Judith does.
AB: When I was finishing Judith’s story, I found it too bleak. I didn’t want to end it with her tragedy, but instead with her triumph. It was too unrealistic and clichéd, in my view, to give Judith herself a happy ending, considering all that comes before, so I gave the happy ending to her heroine. It’s the ending I wanted, and the ending the reader wants. It also frames the book within a fairy tale, shows us that Judith was well aware of the situation she was in, and it immortalizes Judith by ending with her writing.
DON’T MISS OUT
Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
YOUR INBOX IS LIT
Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. Personalize your subscription preferences here.
