fiction Archives

“A book is not interesting to me until it’s impossible for me to write”: Q&A with Robert Glück

by Benjamin Flaumenhaft

December 1, 2025

Posted on December 1, 2025 (December 1, 2025) by editor

A black and white portrait of the author Robert Glück

A chapter from Robert Glück’s Jack the Modernist appeared in the very first issue of ZYZZYVA in 1985. It’s the chapter where Bob, Glück’s avatar and the novel’s narrator, leaves Jack, his lover, in bed and goes to the baths. There, he compares “an orgasm that can be read two ways” to a particular Victorian illusion painting that appears to fluctuate between a woman at a vanity and a skull. We vaguely remember an actual image of said painting from twenty or so pages earlier; the pictures in Jack the Modernist are dispersed, sort of like the pictures in Nadja, […]

Q&A with Madelaine Lucas: ‘Thirst for Salt’ and the Roots of Desire

by Valerie Braylovskiy

March 15, 2023

Posted on March 15, 2023 (March 14, 2023) by Zack Ravas

Madelaine Lucas’s first novel, Thirst for Salt (272 pages; Tin House Books), centers on an unnamed female narrator and her love for an older man, offering profound reflections on how the absence of affection can still take up space in one’s life. Throughout the story, notions of desire are uprooted by the impermanence of relationships, places, and the self. Lucas writes with a poetic precision that captures the sharp and mellow edges of love, as well as its intersections with grief. Born in Australia, Lucas now lives in New York, where she is senior editor of the literary magazine NOON […]

Carrying On: ‘Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors,’ Edited by Grist

by Zoe Binder

March 1, 2023

Posted on March 1, 2023 (February 28, 2023) by Zack Ravas

The twelve stories in the anthology Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors (223 pages; The New Press) take readers into the future and across the globe to witness how humanity has persevered in the face of climate-crisis-induced destruction. Across its pages, readers are treated to exhilarating inventiveness, as the various contributors imagine science-fiction concepts like AI pollinators and plastic-eaters, a program that can translate the thoughts and emotions of animals, and suits that allow humans to wield the distinct strengths of insects like spiders and termites. However, the collection doesn’t simply present imagined solutions to climate change. Many of the […]

Q&A with Colin Winnette: ‘Users’ and the Underbelly of Tech

by Charlie Barton

February 22, 2023

Posted on February 22, 2023 (February 21, 2023) by Zack Ravas

Colin Winnette’s latest novel, Users (271 pages; Soft Skull Press), is much less about virtual reality than the creative minds behind it. The protagonist Miles works at a VR firm as the lead creative and is tasked with hatching up new ideas for future products. He’s well-respected and well-paid, the creator of Ghost Lover, a popular simulation in which the user is haunted by a former flame. His personal life, however, is much less secure: his marriage is precarious, and his children can be difficult and unrelatable. Miles’s anxiety is spurred by the arrival of death threats. But the pressure […]

Announcing our next Writers’ Workshop: Lori Ostlund on 3rd-Person Close Perspective

by ZYZZYVA

February 17, 2023

Posted on February 17, 2023 (February 17, 2023) by Zack Ravas

We’re pleased to announce our next Writers’ Workshop: Lori Ostlund on 3rd-Person Close Perspective. This Zoom-based Writers’ Workshop will take place on April 22nd from 11am to 2pm PST. Purchase your ticket today (and please feel free to spread the word to any of your writer friends!). “I’ve found that often people think that 3rd-close is just a variation on 1st-person, or that widening the distance from the character means that the narrator becomes invisible or neutral, even bland,” says instructor Lori Ostlund, “but I think of 3rd-person close as a way to have the best of both worlds: to […]

‘Dr. No’ By Percival Everett: Bond Upended

by Charlie Barton

February 2, 2023

Posted on February 2, 2023 (February 2, 2023) by Zack Ravas

A black, autistic mathematician, Wala Kitu is not James Bond—but he is the hero of Percival Everett’s anti-Bond, Bond novel, Dr. No (262 pages; Graywolf Press). The book, now a National Book Critics Circle award finalist, is very much a spy thriller—filled with sports cars, hench-people, secret submarines, and hidden shark traps—even though Everett radically subverts the classic 007 formula. Wala’s love interest is another autistic mathematician, Eigen Victor, a specialist in topology with a tendency to state the obvious. And the nefarious super-villain is John Sill, a self-made Black billionaire whose sole purpose is to destroy America, to exact […]

After Dark

by Rhoda Huffey

January 5, 2023

Posted on January 5, 2023 (January 11, 2023) by Zack Ravas

When the pigeon first appeared in my front yard, I noticed because he didn’t fly off immediately. He walked over to the jade plant by my front porch and contemplated the leaves of the succulent. My mind was full of other things at that moment: what to wear to that evening, did a man named

Subscribers only: to access this content, you must be a member of ZYZZYVA Studio. Membership is included with any subscription. Subscribe today, or if you are already a subscriber, log in to continue reading. (Read our FAQ for more details, and contact us if you have any trouble logging in.)

[…]

Obverse

by Yuri Herrera

November 22, 2022

Posted on November 22, 2022 (December 2, 2022) by Zack Ravas

Translated by Lisa DillmanAnd that was why they decided to go off and explore the other side, on which, they hoped, there would be no watery cliffs or dragons awaiting them at the end.They traversed iotas and iotas. Deserts of iotas and dales of iotas and mountains of iotas. Millions of iotas. Until, finally, once

[…]

Flat Map

by Yuri Herrera

November 15, 2022

Posted on November 15, 2022 (December 2, 2022) by Zack Ravas

Translated by Lisa DillmanPerhaps they could have saved the lives of all those who died chasing the truth to the ends of the earth if they’d thought more about, say, the thickness of trees. But these people, like all people, felt compelled to see things with their own eyes, which would later be eaten by

[…]

‘Tell Me the Truth About Love’ by Erik Tarloff: A Bump in the Road to Romance

by Paul Wilner

October 14, 2022

Posted on October 14, 2022 (October 14, 2022) by Zack Ravas

Erik Tarloff’s new novel, Tell Me the Truth About Love (Rare Bird Books; 360 pages), is at once a comedy of manners about the not-so-smart set of San Francisco society, a sex farce complete with a mistaken identity subplot that could have come out of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To The Forum, and a deeply serious examination of just how rocky the road to romance can be. Toby Lindeman makes an inherently undignified living as fundraiser for the San Francisco Opera, which helps him support his ex-wife and teenage daughter. But a chance meeting with Amy Baldwin, […]

‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’ by Gabrielle Zevin: Life as a Game

by Emily Garcia

October 13, 2022

Posted on October 13, 2022 (October 12, 2022) by Zack Ravas

If ever there were ever a novel that replicates the addictive, multi-level quality of video games, it would be Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (416 pages; Knopf),an endearing and loving portrait of three friends who start their own video game company. When they’re eleven, Sam and Sadie meet at the hospital. Sadie’s sister, Alice, is recovering from leukemia, and Sam is recovering from a terrible car accident that practically destroys one of his feet, an injury that haunts him throughout his life. As they wait around, they begin to play video games together, developing the bridge of play […]

‘Sleeping Alone’ by Ru Freeman: Snippets of Life

by Megan V. Luebberman

October 4, 2022

Posted on October 4, 2022 (September 28, 2022) by Zack Ravas

Sleeping Alone (202 pages; Graywolf Press), author Ru Freeman’s newest book, leads readers on a journey into the lives of a variety of unique individuals. In this collection of eleven short stories, Freeman utilizes a different point of view in each to tell of struggles with identity, loss, love, and more. Along the way, she reveals how thinking deeply about our own lives, contemplating our choices, and trying to make meaning of it all is simply a part of being human. The conflict in some stories involves familial relations, such as “The Wake,” which relates how an eccentric mother’s antics […]