Here’s double-shot of The Fallback Plan author Leigh Stein courtesy of Full-Stop and NY Daily News.
Leigh Stein Two-Fer
Ten Years in the Making
” I love the shape of words, I love the comet-tail histories of words. I love the roll and crunch of syllables in my mouth.” In Electric Literature, Laura van den Berg interviews R.O. Kwon about religious fanaticism, “unknowing,” and her upcoming debut novel, The Incendiaries. Pair with: Kwon’s 2017 Year in Reading.
The Restraints of Language
Recommended Reading: Elisa Gabbert at Guernica on the relationship between ideas and language. “How can the name come after the concept if you need the name to understand the concept? This problem of circularity always made me resistant to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strong version, which states that our thoughts are bound by the restraints of our language.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hunt; Gerrard; Molina; Osborne; Jacobson; Greer
Out this week: The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt; The Epiphany Machine by David Burr Gerrard; Like A Fading Shadow by Antonio Muñoz Molina; Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne; The Dog’s Last Walk by Howard Jacobson; and Less by Andrew Sean Greer. For more on these and other new titles, go read our just-published book preview.
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Michael Bourne’s ‘The Old Home Place’ Published by Straylight
The novella The Old Home Place by longtime Millions staffer Michael Bourne offers an intimate look at an ambitious young couple, in love and in trouble, as they grapple with America’s complex racial history.
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We Can’t Wait to Compare It to Its British Version
Every now and again, book designers allow themselves a little fun. This is one of those times. Behold David High’s cheeky cover for Florence Williams’ Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, out this May from W. W. Norton & Co. (via)
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Flying Aces
What happens when two magazine writers publish stories on the same topic within a month of each other? We get to read some of the best long-form journalism of the year. Both Esquire’s Chris Jones and The Washingtonian’s Garrett M. Graff wrote about what it was like to be on Air Force One after the Kennedy assassination. Jones’ “The Flight From Dallas” hits 7,600 words, but Graff’s “Angel is Airborne” totals 18,000. Save some time to read both because they’re equally gripping and uniquely told narratives.
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