Books
Adventures in Self-Voyeurism
By William LessardPoet, memoirist, and essayist Chris Campanioni adapts the dialectic for the age of the smartphone. For him, it’s not about the A/B binary of original object and subverted result; Campanioni brings Situationism to the party, generating texts with performative constraints that are often obscured as the writer erases his path to the final product.
In Conversation
Same as I Ever Was
Susan Perabo with Weston Cutter
I like stories (and I mean here both short stories and novels) where dramatic events happen early, and then those events are made worse—or at least more complicated—by the inept ways characters choose to deal with them. I like to watch people continually screw things up. That’s the kind of story I like to read, and that’s the kind of story I like to write. That’s what keeps me inside.
On “Gay Conversion” Therapy
By Amy DenesonPractices claiming to convert sexual orientation or gender identity and to cure the mental illnesses or developmental disorders that purportedly cause same-sex attraction had been banned in five states and the District of Columbia.
Touring Trump Country in a Clown Car
By John DominiFor a story beset with some of the ugliest traumas of fractured contemporary America, Mary Troy’s busy new novel careens along with remarkable lightheartedness.
Left Lying
By Weston CutterI fell hard for Susan Perabo last year after reading her short-story collection Why They Run the Way They Do, a collection of somehow entirely domestic, and truly mysterious and strange stories.
Ghost Story
By Weston CutterLet’s admit at the outset that it has grown weirdly difficult to read or respond to George Saunders. Not because he’s not great, but because he’s now So Great.
