Walpurgisnacht is a gloaming time when the membrane between the here and the hereafter is more porous. The post Hymn for Walpurgisnacht appeared first on The Millions.

"It was hard on many levels, and I had to keep going back to why I was writing in the first place." The post Why Write Memoir? Two Debut Authors Weigh In appeared first on The Millions.

"Rulfo travels in time and space with an absolute freedom without us getting lost." The post “You Can Almost Hear the Ghosts”: <br>Valeria Luiselli on Juan Rulfo appeared first on The Millions.

We’re thrilled to reveal the cover for Sam Sax‘s forthcoming debut novel Yr Dead, slated for August 6.  Here’s a bit about the book, courtesy of McSweeney’s: In between the space of time when Ezra lights themself on fire and when Ezra dies the world

I'm uncomfortable with the simple statement of “books saved us” as much as I agree they do. The post Suzanne Scanlon’s Life Was Shaped by Books—<br>for Better and for Worse appeared first on The Millions.

I knew from the dozens of other interviews I had read with him that Everett doesn’t love doing press. “I wonder why?” he joked to me. The post Several Attempts at Understanding Percival Everett appeared first on The Millions.

"I’ve never been interested in making a claim to originality." The post Kate Briggs Isn’t Trying to Be Original appeared first on The Millions.

April April 2 Women! In! Peril! by Jessie Ren Marshall [F] For starters, excellent title. This debut short story collection from playwright Marshall spans sex bots and space colonists, wives and divorcées, prodding at the many meanings of womanhood.

In a novel where sisterhood entails constant conflict, illness provides an unexpected emotional salve. The post In Alexandra Tanner’s ‘Worry,’ Illness Is the Status Quo appeared first on The Millions.

The heron has a robust mythological history across many cultures, and while the meanings differ, many deal with death, rebirth, and transformation. The post The Other Boy and the Heron appeared first on The Millions.

"'You Dreamed of Empires' is at open war with the romantic representations of the Mexican past." The post Álvaro Enrigue Won’t Romanticize Mexican History appeared first on The Millions.

People struggle to hold multiple ideas in their heads at once, and so attempt to pigeonhole female writers, but I am very comfortable leaning into duality. The post Yomi Adegoke Contains Multitudes appeared first on The Millions.

The slow writer embraces the protracted and unpredictable timeline, seeing it not as fraught or frustrating but an opportunity for openness and discovery. The post The Virtue of Slow Writers appeared first on The Millions.

"The only reason I was interested in the story was to give Ana Mendieta agency." The post Xochitl Gonzalez Wants to Reframe Art History appeared first on The Millions.

When I started learning British Sign Language as an adult, and ditched my hearing aids for periods of time, I didn’t find silence waiting for me. Instead, silence simply ceased to exist. The post Deafness Is Not a Silence: <br>On the Suppressio

"Academic Twitter is something of a compulsion for me. My wife hates it." The post Dan Sinykin on Fiction, Scholarship, and Academic Twitter appeared first on The Millions.

The latest translation of 'Pedro Páramo' is a mystifying work, in the dual sense that it is confounding and that its language possesses an almost mystical quality. The post At Long Last, a Translation Worthy of ‘Pedro Páramo’ appeared first on The Mi

I was, and still am, the most reviled type of tennis player. The post Tennis Lessons from David Foster Wallace appeared first on The Millions.

"She's pissed off. I guess that's why a lot of people don't want to read her. But it gives a book intensity." The post “She Pierces the World”: Olga Ravn on Doris Lessing appeared first on The Millions.

The sexual objectification of the body, of our bodies, is less an insult these days and more of a goal.  The post Old Lesbian Love appeared first on The Millions.

"While Paris is gray-blue, New York is very, very colorful." The post The French Cartoonist <br>Who Limned New York City appeared first on The Millions.

What makes a poet a poet? There is of course no simple answer. You could argue that self-declaration is enough. You could also argue there must be a measure. The post The Path Is No Path: On Not Becoming a Poet appeared first on The Millions.

English has become not just the “language of Europe”—it has become the dominant lingua franca of the world. The post How English Took Over the World appeared first on The Millions.

Far from being ornamental, wordplay serves a very specific function in 'Verdigris.' The post Language That Lives: How to Translate an Italian Master appeared first on The Millions.

"My early personal writing leaned so far towards certain kinds of self-recrimination that I had to learn how to lean away from it." The post Leslie Jamison Serves the ‘God of Complexity’ appeared first on The Millions.

By rephotographing the material Sebald brought to him, Michael Brandon-Jones played a critical role in helping the writer achieve a tonal consistency between text and image. The post The Collaborative Alchemy of W.G. Sebald’s Photographs appeared fir

For all her generic legerdemain, Kelly Link is deep down a romance writer. The post Kelly Link’s Romantic Imagination appeared first on The Millions.

I remember crying the day I made a decision about his character: It seemed clear what needed to happen. The post Pressure-and-Release: Writing Shanghai’s Rooftoppers appeared first on The Millions.

"All my stories have something to do with women who refuse to be pigeonholed or enslaved by men in any way." The post Debra Magpie Earling Is Reclaiming Native Women’s Agency appeared first on The Millions.

In someone else’s hands, these stories might be little more than typeset urban legends, the stuff of 2000s-era AOL email chains, but Sims renders them as something both terrifying and mesmerizing. The post The Everyday Horror of ‘Other Minds and Othe