Yaa Gyasi’s recently released and critically acclaimed first novel, Homegoing (320 pages; Knopf) moves from late 18th century West Africa to 21st century California, tracking the repercussions of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Gyasi, a graduate from Stanford and the Iowa Writers Workshop, and whose book was just named to the longlist for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, illustrates how slavery and white supremacy shaped life in the African diaspora by exploring the history of a single family—one branch of which remains in what eventually becomes Ghana, while the other experiences the turbulent history of African America. By […]
Month: July 2016
A World of TV Eyes: ‘The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe’ by D.G. Compton
by Zack Ravas
From Google Glass to drone warfare and genetic modification, it’s fair to say that our contemporary world bears more than a passing resemblance to the science-fiction novels of yesteryear. Originally published in 1974, English writer D.G. Compton’s The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, recently reprinted by New York Review Books Classics, is a vintage piece of speculative fiction that feels of the here and now, and startlingly so. Mortenhoe opens on a society that could very well be our own in another fifteen years: a culture rife with economic disparity, where most diseases have been eradicated and the populace is sated by […]
A Terrible Twist of Fate, the Birth of a Writer: ‘Will & I’ by Clay Byars
by Will Howard
Clay Byars’ memoir, Will & I (192 pages; FSG Originals), could have opened on the car crash that changes Byars’ life at 20. It could have opened nine months after the crash when surgery that is supposed to fix the nerve damage in his shoulder results in a stroke that leaves him paralyzed and near death once more. It could have even opened on the stroke itself, the dizziness and life receding “to a dreamlike distance.” It could have opened on any one of the many dramatic circumstances punctuating Byars’ life, but instead it opens on a singing lesson. After […]
‘Stealth’ by Etan Nechin, ZYZZYVA No. 106, Spring/Summer
by editor
Etan Nechin is an Israeli-born writer currently living in New York. His work has appeared in such publications as Gravel Magazine, MonkeyBicycle, Entropy, and the Huffington Post, and several other publications in Hebrew. “Stealth” marks his First Time in Print for fiction in English.
Set at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War of the early ’90s, “Stealth” is narrated by a school boy living among a community of artists in Israel. Amid the gas masks, safety drills at school, and trading of U.S. military-themed bubble gum cards, there’s the everyday (and comic) life of a child trying to make sense of the world and his place in it. The following is an excerpt of “Stealth.” You can read the story in its entirety in Issue No. 106, which you can order here.
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‘Hotel Bar’ by Ruth Madievsky, ZYZZYVA No. 106, Spring/Summer
by editor
Ruth Madievsky is the author of the collection Emergency Brake (Tavern Books). She is also a doctoral student at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy, and a research assistant in an HIV clinic in Los Angeles.
Two of her latest poems appear in Issue No. 106: “Wind” and “Hotel Bar.” (Madievsky has been published in ZYZZYVA before. Her poem “Poem for Spring” appeared in No. 103.) Her work, as described by Maggie Millner in an interview with Madievsky, forces “a dialogue between her romantic and clinical inclinations and suggesting the body’s dangerous propensity for betrayal.” “Hotel Bar” could be seen as an example of that. Here it is in its entirety. You can read that poem and “Wind,” too, in Issue No. 106, which you can order here.
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‘Amboise’ by Ariel Dorfman, ZYZZYVA No. 106, Spring/Summer
by editor
Ariel Dorfman is the acclaimed novelist, playwright and author of Death and the Maiden. His writing frequently appears in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Republic, as well as numerous other magazines internationally. He is a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, and his most recent book is the memoir Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile.
In his story “Amboise,” Dorfman gives us Lucy and Leo, a couple visiting France, on their way from Paris to see Chenonceau. As they deal with the various hiccups keeping them from getting to their destination, Leo’s determination to see the famous castle before the day is through is fueled by a single thought: “Tomorrow I wouldn’t be alive.” Leo, whose health has been failing, is resolute on killing himself before then. The following is an excerpt of Dorfman’s story. You can read it in its entirety in Issue No. 106, which you can order here.
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The Pain Hard to Name: Q&A with ‘Swallowed by the Cold’ Author Jensen Beach
by Will Howard
The stories in Jensen Beach’s second story collection, Swallowed by the Cold (208 pages; Graywolf Press), demonstrate again and again that self-destruction doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In “Kino,” we meet a young man named Oskar who swears he intended to torch just his own boat, but who ended up setting fire to an entire marina. Oskar happens to work at what seems to be a gay brothel called Kino Club, which an uptight man named Martin frequents. The two encounter each other at a party where Martin’s wife, Louise, gets too drunk. Suffering under the weight of Martin’s self-denial, […]
‘Who Will Help the Queen of the Rodeo?’ by Ron Carlson, ZYZZYVA No. 106, Spring/Summer
by editor
Ron Carlson is the author of several books of fiction, including Return to Oakpine (Viking) and The Signal (Penguin). He is the director of the MFA Program in Fiction at the University of California at Irvine. His fiction appeared in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 96 and No. 100.
His latest story for ZYZZYVA, “Who Will Help the Queen of the Rodeo?,” savors that time when families have just begun: the children are still children, the time spent together is uncomplicated, and the goodness of the world is palpable—even if we can’t help but know that this idyll is fleeting. Set at the beginning of a summer vacation, reading Carlson’s story now is apt. But it’s the story’s tenderness that makes it a particularly welcoming world in which to enter. The following is an excerpt of Carlson’s story. You can read it in its entirety in Issue No. 106, which you can order here.
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