What the Editors of Write or Die Magazine Are Reading
Patricia Lockwood, Chelsea Bieker, Rachel Kushner and more
Welcome to a new little series for the Write or Die mags newsletter! We’ve been posting what we've been reading on Instagram, but our editors are chatty, and not everything they want to say fits in one of those little carousel cards. So here, we can rant as much as we want!
Suzanne Grove, assistant fiction editor | Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
“There is something fierce and starved about first ideas.”
This novel, nominated for a National Book Award and written by John Darnielle, the lead singer of The Mountain Goats, is about grief and death, suicide and loneliness, metal music and isolation. It is a novel I have thought about at least once a week for years.
Brittany Ackerman, assistant editor | Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
I read Priestdaddy at the suggestion of one of my bookish bffs, and finally picked up No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. And we need to talk about this book. “It was a mistake to believe that other people were not living as deeply as you were. Besides, you were not even living that deeply”-- this book made me rethink my entire existence, for real. Lockwood ties together two narratives: one of doomscrolling and hilarity and one of visceral tragedy. I was so moved by the way Lockwood was able to traverse both worlds so seamlessly, so intuitively, in the writing. It was like swimming, diving beneath the ripples to find spectacular sights and then coming up for air to a world that’s been completely changed and altered all while you were gone.
“There is still a real life to be lived, there are still real things to be done.” And yes, this book made me want to live my very real life and do very real things, and perhaps to be able to finally appreciate my surreal existence.
Shelby Hinte, senior editor | Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
As a Rachel Kushner mega-fan, it only makes sense that I’ve been living in the world of Creation Lake. It has all the Kushnerisms I’ve come to look for—fringe communities, unreliable women, acerbic wit, rigorously researched histories, and grandiose men inflated by their own sense of grandeur. At each corner of the book’s universe, a cast of unconventional characters all seek the same thing: a way to survive in an untenable society.
Nirica Srinivasan, interviews editor | Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
There are so many layers to what Luiselli achieves here—it’s such an astonishing, ambitious book, and I can’t wait to reread it over and over again. Told through mixed media—photographs, lists, differing perspectives—it’s the story of one family’s road trip, the US border crisis, and a reflection on how documentation and archiving can capture an experience.
Tamar Mekredijian, fiction editor | Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Lara’s daughters beg her to tell the story of her past, and the more they learn about it, the more they are led to confront their own lives - their own decisions about love. Patchett has a way of keeping you spellbound even when jumping back and forth in time, which is not an easy feat.
Kailey Brennan DelloRusso, editor in chief | Madwoman by
It seems like everyone is reading this novel right now, and if you aren't, you should be! I adore everything Chelsea writes, but this one truly left me in awe. “How does she do it?” I ask myself as I gawk at her beautiful sentences, somehow cry and laugh simultaneously, and feel my heart about to burst with the humanity she infuses into every one of her characters. Madwoman is a showstopper, and Chelsea is a phenomenal writer.
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips. Brilliant book and daring surprises in the narrative. I couldn't stop reading the last 100 pages.
Small presses, yes! Just wanted to share that sometimes pieces published in small literary magazines can eventually become part of a published book. With the help of Chill Subs for finding submission opportunities, this week I have in my hands my brand new chapbook RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN published by Old Scratch Press, (a volunteer run collective.) THANK YOU.