In our afternoon reading: new fiction from Kelly Link and Amber Sparks; Scott Cheshire on his year in reading; notes on writing from Emily St. John Mandel; Sofia Samatar on The Empathy Exams; and more.
Interviews with Eileen Myles and Amber Sparks, a look at the work of William T. Vollmann, Rebecca Mead takes issue with the concept of “relatability,” adapting YA novels as comics, and more.
Thoughts on Michael Hastings’s novel, Amber Sparks ponders a new genre, talking with Priests, inside a new neo-noir anthology, and more.
May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks Curbside Splendor; 148 p. “Death and the People,” the opening story in Amber Sparks’s new collection May We Shed These Human Bodies, ably sets the tone for the book that it follows. A group of bored mortals encounter Death and, en masse, set out for the afterlife. They spend their days there in a listless approximation of their terrestrial lives, occasionally frustrating the celestial agents around them; they watch as Earth […]