Sasha Vasilyuk was born in the Soviet Crimea, and she spent her childhood in Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to San Francisco at the age of 13. Vasilyuk had always known her Jewish and Ukrainian grandfather as a World War II hero. When he passed away, her grandmother discovered a confession he’d written to the KGB that revealed a secret he’d kept his entire life. This letter—and the fraught, hidden history it implied—became the inspiration for Vasilyuk’s debut novel, Your Presence is Mandatory. In the novel, Yefim Shulman, a Jewish Ukrainian, becomes a soldier after Germany attacks the S ..read more

I’ve been hungering for climate change fiction that feels real, honest, and personal, so when I came across The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes, I knew I’d found something special. In this book, four orphan sisters, now in their thirties, all respond to the climate crisis in disparate ways. One sister, in despair, runs away from everyone and everything she loves. Another retreats, in a different way, into ancient classical philosophy. The third sister nearly pulls her hair out trying to change the political system. And lastly, a chef tries to embody the solution through sustainable food and ed ..read more

At the time of this writing, much of Illinois is in a college basketball frenzy, as the University of Illinois, the flagship state university, has advanced to the Sweet 16 of the men’s tournament for the first time in almost twenty years. The Illini have a legitimate shot at the national championship, and even people with no affiliation to the school other than loose regional identity are cheering for the Fighting Illini (update: the championship did not happen).  But of course, when we are cheering for the Illini, we are cheering for a name spelled with theft. The name Illinois is derive ..read more

Planning a trip can be a tricky business right now. The good news? Whether you’re between trips or unable to afford a vacation right now, you can still travel the world through books. Hop from continent to continent with these novels that will allow you to explore other cultures, immerse yourself in the history or atmosphere of another place, and fall into landscapes you’ve never gotten to explore—all from the comfort of your own little reading nook or from the busy scramble of your morning commute. I won’t pretend this list is definitive—there are so many countries in this world to explore!—b ..read more

For Arionne Nettles, Black Chicago influences everything. Her first book, We Are The Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything, is about paying dues to the Black people, places, and institutions that built up Chicago and shaped American pop culture. She steers a course through the history of Black Chicago, beginning with the Great Migration, when over half a million Black Americans moved from the South to Chicago. From the start of Black media outlets, like the Chicago Defender, Jet, and Ebony, to the heyday of Black radio celebrities, she races through journalism, music, radio, fashion ..read more

I was deeply affected by artist Alisha Wormsley’s installation “There are Black People in the Future,” with its essential assertion that despite societal actions—and inactions—the systemic violence performed against Black people would never, could never, eliminate their presence and significance in our world. […], the new, exceptionally present, and unforgettable collection by Palestinian-American poet and physician Fady Joudah—emotionally, politically, lyrically, and yes, hopefully—makes the same necessary affirmation: “[T]here will be Gaza after the dark times.” Even the title of the collect ..read more

Suzanne Scanlon’s Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen excavates some of her most formative memories for clues to her evolving selfhood. The death of her mother when Scanlon was nine years old, her relationship to literature, particularly the writings of Marguerite Duras, and her years spent institutionalized are linchpins in this layered examination of sanity and care. In 1992, as a lonely undergraduate who could not seem to find a foothold in the bustling Big Apple, twenty year-old Suzanne Scanlon gradually made a suicide pact with her only local friend, Leo. At the critical moment, when he ca ..read more

The eeriness and isolation of uncolonized, hostile worlds make S.A. Barnes’s sophomore novel, Ghost Station, feel claustrophobic. Yet it also remains a work about community and personhood that centers on self-knowledge and self-chosen identity. These opposing thematic threads reflect the motivating force of the story personified in Ophelia Bray, the black sheep of an obscenely rich family. Ophelia or Phe, is a psychologist seeking redemption after one of her patients commits suicide. When she inserts herself into an exploration crew to distance herself from both the tragedy and her family’s ma ..read more

In fall 2020, Zito Madu moved to Venice for work. He nervously left his parents back at their home in Detroit, and entered a city usually packed with tourists and now comparably deserted, shops opening and closing at unexpected times, the curving streets often empty except for him. Within the labyrinth of an eerie Venice, Madu reflects on himself and his own memories in The Minotaur at Calle Lanza. In the midst of pandemic closures, Venice resists Madu’s attempts to make himself comfortable. On his very first night he discovers a pizza shop where he has a nice, quietly happy moment with its ow ..read more

Clare Beams is a writer’s writer. Whenever I talk with fellow writers about work we admire, the fact of Clare’s genius is one on which we all seem to agree. From the moment her remarkable and wholly original debut story collection, We Show What We Have Learned, appeared, I fell in love with Clare’s fiction. Her work is beautifully constructed, impeccable, classic in its attention to the foundations of good, old-fashioned storytelling, but also off-kilter and strange in its imaginings. The way she manages to build a creeping dread is nearly unparalleled—and has rightly earned her comparisons to ..read more