“One Relieves the Other”: Eileen Myles on Second Novels, Poet’s Novels, and Punctuation

This past year, after seeing that authors often receive less attention for their sophomore novels, Slate teamed up with the Whiting Foundation to create a new literary prize, The Slate/Whiting Second Novel List. Five authors and their second novels were named to this list, among them revolutionary and experimental poet Eileen Myles and her novel Inferno. In an essay describing why Inferno was included in the list, writer and editor Sasha Weiss noted, “It will teach you that yearning has […]

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Notable American Blurbers

Not long ago, a galley of Craig Davidson’s forthcoming novel Cataract City showed up at my door. I haven’t yet read it, but a quick glance at the back cover motivated me to send a quick email to a friend indicating that it might be up his alley. That certainly had something to do with the book’s plot, which involved grit and corruption in a Canadian town, but it also had more than a little to do with the blurb on […]

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