Jia Tolentino. Photo: Elena Mudd.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, formerly the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at The Hairpin. She grew up in Texas, went to the University of Virginia, and got her M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Michigan. Her book of essays, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (Random House, 2019), was a New York Times best seller. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

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An excerpt from Trick Mirror:

The call of self-expression turned the village of the internet into a city, which expanded at time-lapse speed, social connections bristling like neurons in every direction. At ten, I was clicking around a web ring to check out other Angelfire sites full of animal GIFs and Smash Mouth trivia. At twelve, I was writing five hundred words a day on a public LiveJournal. At fifteen, I was uploading photos of myself in a miniskirt on Myspace. By twenty-five, my job was to write things that would attract, ideally, a hundred thousand strangers per post. Now I’m thirty, and most of my life is inextricable from the internet, and its mazes of incessant forced connection—this feverish, electric, unlivable hell. Read More

Genevieve Sly Crane. Photo: Andrew Baris.

Genevieve Sly Crane is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts and Stony Brook Southampton, where she received her M.F.A. She teaches in the creative writing and literature B.F.A. program at Stony Brook. Sorority (Scout, 2018) is her first publication.

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An excerpt from Sorority:

Even as children, I knew that I loved Shannon enough to fail myself. I loved her liar’s chin, tilted downward with the sharpness of a spade when she spoke. I loved her tiny, fluid fingers that stole gum and Tic Tacs so easily when cashiers rummaged under the counter. And I feared that seed deep within that I could see in her pupils if I disappointed her, if I showed her my own unease.

I see it so perfectly in our photographs now: we were little girls, with potbellies under bathing suits and eyes we hadn’t grown into yet, but my apprehension was there, wavering in my face, undulating with the heat waves behind us on the beach.

She scared me. Read More

Jake Skeets. Photo: Quanah Yazzie.

Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born for Water’s Edge. He is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico. He is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019), a National Poetry Series–winning collection of poems. He holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Skeets is a winner of the 2018 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Skeets edits an online publication called Cloudthroat and organizes a poetry salon and reading series called Pollentongue, based in the Southwest. He is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: A Diné Writers’ Collective and currently teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona.

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“Virginity”

Clouds in his throat,
six months’ worth.

He bodies into me
half cosmos, half coyote. Read More

Ling Ma. Photo: Anjali Pint.

Ling Ma is author of the novel Severance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), which received the Kirkus Prize and the Young Lions Fiction Award and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018. Her work has appeared in Granta, Playboy, Vice, Ninth Letter, Chicago Reader, and other publications. She holds an M.F.A. from Cornell University and an A.B. from the University of Chicago. She lives in Chicago.

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An excerpt from Severance:

Todd opened the Gowers’ front door. Okay, ready! he yelled.

We put on our face masks and rubber gloves. We went inside, carrying empty boxes and garbage bags.

The door opened up to a large foyer. The walls of the staircase were hung with family photos. The Gower clan included a mother and father, a son and an older daughter. The father balding and portly, the mother, a bleached blonde, tightly trim with a wan smile, her hands crossed in her lap, displaying a pert French manicure, the manicure of choice among porn actresses and Midwestern housewives. Read More

Andrea Lawlor. Photo: Ramin Talaie.

Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, edits fiction for Fence magazine, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their writing has appeared in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Mutha, The Millions, and Encyclopedia, Vol. II. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Rescue, hardback, 2017; Vintage, paperback, 2019), a 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards.

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An excerpt from Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl:

Paul considered real bookstores (as opposed to sex bookstores) the best places for afternoon cruising, the more serious cruising, date cruising. At night you were all set; you found yourself at a bar or party, drank drinks, met a person, and decamped with that person to a second location. Instant date. No need to arrange or plan, and complete flexibility in the likely case you found a more amenable situation at the last minute. Daytime cruising, when not at a tea dance or beer bust, required more finesse and more certainty. First off, both parties had more time to second-guess between the securing of the phone number and the calling of the phone number. Secondly, you saw the person in the harshest light and without any softening lens such as beer, wine, or whiskey. In Paul’s ranking of all possible daytime cruising locations, gay non-sex-shop bookstores ranked at the top: congregants within were most likely to be both out and literate, qualities Paul valued. He thought fondly of the hours he’d spent at Oscar Wilde or the Different Light back in New York or even the HQ 76 section of the university library’s stacks, though, to his endless disappointment, he’d only ever found library success in men’s rooms. Read More

Jaquira Díaz. Photo: Maria Esquinca.

Jaquira Díaz is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir (Algonquin, 2019), a Summer/Fall 2019 Indies Introduce Selection, a Fall 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, a November 2019 Indie Next Pick, and a Library Reads October pick. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, the Guardian, The FADER, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Best American Essays 2016, among other publications. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. A former visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s M.F.A. Program in creative writing and consulting editor at the Kenyon Review, she splits her time between Montreal and Miami Beach. Her second book, I Am Deliberate: A Novel, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books.

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An excerpt from Ordinary Girls:

As Papi tried to carry Mami toward our front door, she slid down and got loose, and all the street kids exploded, Pito and Anthony and Eggy calling out, “Light her up! Knock her out! Préndela!” It was the same kind of shouting we heard in our living room during boxing matches, my father and his friends knocking back Medallas in front of the TV, everybody jumping to their feet when Macho Camacho started wailing on José Luis Ramírez, hollering, Knock him out! Light him up! Préndelo!  Read More