Tag: excerpt

writing

Read an excerpt from Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh

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Read an excerpt from Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh

The following is an excerpt from Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh.  She is a Scotland-based writer and editor from the north of Ireland.

Foreign Fruit is a blend of memoir and cultural history, using the orange as a lens to explore themes of identity, migration, and belonging. As Goh traces the fruit’s global journey, she parallels it with her own search for self as a queer woman of Chinese-Malaysian-Irish descent growing up in Northern Ireland. It is now available to purchase from Tin House.

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writing

Read an excerpt Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom

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Read an excerpt Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom

The following is an excerpt from Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom. They grew up in Illinois and now work as a creative director in Brooklyn. You can subscribe to their Substack, which needs exactly two monthly subscribers to pay for Carlstrom’s NBA League Pass subscription.

Make Sure You Die Screaming follows a nonbinary narrator who, after a corporate burnout and personal trauma, steals a car and leaves Chicago to search for their missing conspiracy theorist father in Arkansas. Teaming up with a chaotic companion, they navigate a surreal, emotional road trip through America’s ideological and economic divides. As they confront their past and the scars left by capitalism, gender expectations, and family dysfunction, the journey becomes both literal and deeply psychological. It is now available to purchase from Flatiron Books.

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writing

Read an excerpt from Optional Practical Training by Shubha Sunder

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Read an excerpt from Optional Practical Training by Shubha Sunder

The following is an excerpt from Optional Practical Training by Shubha Sunder. She is the author of the story collection Boomtown Girl, which won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. Originally from Bangalore, India, she now lives in Boston with her family.

Told through a series of conversations, Optional Practical Training follows Pavitra, a young Indian woman navigating her post-college year in the U.S. on a student work visa. As she teaches math and physics at a private high school near Cambridge, she quietly resists the expectations of those around her—family, colleagues, landlords, and students—while longing for the space to write. Through their words and assumptions, a nuanced portrait emerges of a woman shaping her identity, ambition, and sense of belonging. It is now available to purchase from Graywolf Press.

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writing

Read an Excerpt from Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

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Read an Excerpt from Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

Madeleine Gray‘s debut novel Green Dot is a millennial romp that astutely observes romance, work, and failure to live up to expectations. Anyone of a certain age has lived through countless recessions, wars, and turmoil. They know how exhausting life can be. Gray turns the minutia on its head to spark hilarious moment after moment as an affair unfolds and breaks the main character out of the exhaustive cycle she’s found herself in.

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writing

Read an excerpt from Kill For Love by Laura Picklesimer

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Read an excerpt from Kill For Love by Laura Picklesimer

Laura Picklesimer’s writing will knock your socks off. Her debut novel Kill For Love is a visceral thriller bursting with satire and through-provoking commentary. It follows a sadistic sorority girl who has one desire: kill the hot boys at her school.

The book is dark and twisted in all of the right ways. Her debut is a pitch-perfect riot.

Prior to writing Kill for Love, her writing has appeared in the Santa Ana River Review, Bookwoman, Gold Man Review, the Pomona Valley Review the California Current Writers Series, and elsewhere. She has also won numerous writing contests including Enizagam Journal’s 2018 Fiction Contest

Kill for Love is available on September 12. You can read an excerpt below.

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writing

Read an excerpt from I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself by Marisa Crane

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Read an excerpt from I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself by Marisa Crane

Marisa Crane’s debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself, explores queer parenthood in a near-future dystopian America. In it, Kris is a new mother who is grieving the loss of her wife. She’s also a “Shadester,” a person who has been stripped of civil rights protections due to something she did in her past.

The novel is written in beautiful, vivid fragments that will leave a lump in your throat. Crane taps into their characters’ inner psyche with pitch perfect insight. There is a sense of very real realism in this very weird speculative work of fiction. I first read Crane’s book in August 2022 and I can say I have thought about it at least once a week. Exoskeletons will stay with readers long after the last page. It will haunt readers. It will change how readers think about parenthood, grief, and our country. It’s a must read for anyone looking for one of the best books of 2023.

I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself is out now. You can read an excerpt from the book below.

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