Nineteen and Pregnant in 1969

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I hadn’t been religious for some time, but I prayed, 'God, please don’t let me die.'
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Ain’t That Pretty at All; Or, Going to the Tigers-Robert Cohen

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Like most people, I would often prefer to be someone else. Ideally, the prose this other self would write would not be like mine at all.
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The Unexpected Poetry of Book Spines

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In 'Spine Poems,' Annette Simon assembles found poems from the contents of her own bookshelves.
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Hellbent and Hydebound

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Where Stevenson’s contemporaries explored specific tensions within the Victorian psyche, 'Jekyll and Hyde' pinned the split personality of the era to the page.
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The Mystery of James Purdy

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Several puzzles of Purdy’s life may never be solved—and probably ought not to be.
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“She’s Losing It”: An Excerpt from ‘The Autodidacts’

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"She stares at the Walkman, assumes an attitude of prayer, makes a wager, presses play."
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How Jackie O Helped Bring ‘Sally Hemings’ to Life

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Barbara Chase-Riboud remembers Jacqueline Kennedy's role in publishing her groundbreaking debut novel.
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To the Last Be Human

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An excerpt from Robert Macfarlane's introduction to Jorie Graham's '[To] The Last [Be] Human.'
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“What Kind of Kid Would Do This?”: An Excerpt from Rita Cameron’s ‘The House Party’

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He’d imagined himself in an office with parquet floors and brass fixtures. Maybe even a bar cart. The reality of public service had turned out to be a little different.
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Lydia Millet on Loving the Rocky Horror Novel

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I don’t know how I got my own copy. I only know I read it into rags.
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Panel Mania: ‘Made In Korea’

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Somehow the idea of a near-future world in which childless couples can purchase sophisticated robotic kids powered by AI doesn't seem all that far fetched.
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Panel Mania: ‘Enter The Blue’

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Commissioned by the celebrated jazz recording label Blue Note Records, Dave Chisholm’s new graphic novel Enter The Blue is a whimsical tribute to the origin of the record company and its long and distinguished history.
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Plundered: An Introductory Excerpt from McSweeney’s #65

Our goal in selecting texts from across this vast expanse and uniting them under this rubric is to reclaim and redistribute the name America, fraught provenance and all.

‘Cairo Circles’: Featured Fiction from Doma Mahmoud

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An excerpt from a debut novel that Booklist calls "enthralling" and Kirkus hails as "an ambitious literary debut."
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Panel Mania: ‘The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book’

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This seven-page excerpt documents the 1990 Oka Crisis, a 77-day armed standoff with Canadian police and military in the Mohawk territories of the Kahnawake and Kanesatake near Montreal.
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Panel Mania: ‘Run: Book One’

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In this short excerpt from Run, the late Rep. John Lewis reflects on growing political factions within the ranks of the Black Civil Rights Movement and acknowledges the global nature of the Black liberation movement.
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Porochista Khakpour on Stephen Dixon: An Excerpt from McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #63

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When you really live, and when you really tackle that life in your art, the pages never quite end. The narration might drop out, but the story is still in motion. If done right, the border blurs, the boundaries of life and of art fade into each other.
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‘Give My Love to the Savages’: Featured Fiction from Chris Stuck

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In this edition of Featured Fiction, we present an excerpt from a debut story collection that Victor LaValle praised as "Black satire with bite."
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