Here’s a sampling of some of the writing in Issue No. 112, which you can get today with a subscription to ZYZZYVA: San Francisco Loved Us Once, an essay by JOSHUA MOHR: We stampeded to this magnificent speck known as San Francisco because we were too queer, too punk, too arty. We were the wrong color or born with the wrong genitalia. We were too fat or too tattooed or too sick or our own family simply despised us. Other places, we were easy targets. We were gristle trapped in a bully’s teeth. So we flocked here because it called to us, San […]
Tag: nonfiction
A Balance Between Cultures: ‘How to Write an Autobiographical Novel’ by Alexander Chee
by Ingrid Vega
In his first nonfiction collection, award-winning novelist, poet, and journalist Alexander Chee offers a reflective look at his life in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (288 pages; Mariner Books). From his time in Mexico learning high school-level Spanish to his undergrad days at Wesleyan, and later the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, as well as his AIDs activism in San Francisco, the book is a well-orchestrated chronicle of a life well-lived. Growing up as a Korean American, Chee often struggled with his identity and felt awkward in public, as when his long hair caused him to be mistaken as a girl, […]
Endless Fascination: Q&A with ‘L.A. Man’ Author Joe Donnelly
by Zack Ravas
You can’t accuse Joe Donnelly of taking it easy. In a decades-spanning career, the Los Angeles writer has profiled the “who’s who” of Hollywood—from America’s sweetheart Drew Barrymore to iconoclast filmmaker Werner Herzog—in the pages of publications like L.A. Weekly, where he served as deputy editor for a number of years. During that time, his short stories have earned him an O. Henry Prize (“Bonus Baby,” from ZYZZYVA No. 103) and have been adapted into short films. Donnelly also co-founded and co-edited Slake, a short-lived but highly acclaimed journal that gathered journalism, fiction, poetry, and art, all with a distinctly […]
When Art Must Step In: Q&A with ‘Bullets into Bells’ Editor Dean Rader
by Isabel Erickson White
The poetry collection Bullets into Bells (Beacon Press) stands as an innovative response to American gun violence. The work is a collection of poetry, each poem paired with a prose response written by an “activist, political figure, survivor, or concerned individual.” Many of the poems are in response to widely reported shootings, such as Sandy Hook or the murder of Tamir Rice, but there are also several accounts of less publicized shootings. Despite the high coverage of gun violence in the media, reading this book gives the sense that this type of violence is even more pervasive than it seems, and that nearly […]
What We’re Reading this Women’s History Month
by ZYZZYVA Staff
March represents Women’s History Month and, as such, we thought we would share a brief overview of some of the women we’ve been reading as of late, which includes a group of authors operating within a myriad of genres and hailing from a number of locales. We hope this collection serves as just a small sampling of the dynamic work being done by women in literature and non-fiction today. Laura Cogan, Editor: “No one knew the real story but me,” declares one of Joan Silber’s exquisitely drawn characters near the end of Improvement. It is both a brag and a burden this character bears—and a […]
Truth in a Glass: ‘The Wine Lover’s Daughter’ by Anne Fadiman
by Isabel Erickson White
In The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir (272 pages; FSG), Anne Fadiman, the author of Ex Libris, At Large and Small: Familiar Essays, and, most notably, her prize winning work of nonfiction, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, writes about her famous father, Clifton, or Kip, Fadiman. She centers her memoir, her first book in ten years, around her father’s love of wine, a love affair that begins on his first trip to Paris with an inexpensive bottle of white Graves. Although Kip Fadiman’s love of wine was sincere—he found pleasure in the taste and complexities of wine, […]
‘Understanding, Misunderstanding, and then Sitting Down to Write’ by Andrew Tonkovich: ZYZZYVA, No. 111, Winter Issue
by editor
Andrew Tonkovich is the co-editor of the anthology “Orange County: A Literary Field Guide,” published by Heyday, and editor of the Santa Monica Review. To ring in the new year, we’re presenting in its entirety his essay “Understanding, Misunderstanding, and then Sitting Down to Write” from ZYZZYVA No. 111: The following is an edited version of the closing talk given at the Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw Valley in July, 2017. “I live in terror of not being misunderstood.” —Oscar Wilde I’m proud of at least the title of this talk, and the epigraph. If the rest of it falls […]
Reflections in an Uncertain Era: ZYZZYVA Looks Back at Our Favorite Reads in 2017
by ZYZZYVA Staff
We can think of a lot of words to describe 2017, but “trying” would certainly be one. If you’re anything like the team at ZYZZYVA, you’ve found yourself reaching for book covers new and familiar as both a source of comfort and intellectual edification during these tumultuous times. As 2017 winds to a close, we thought we would take a look back at some of the titles that proved most memorable for us. What was your favorite book you read this year (whether it was published in 2017 or not)? Feel free to share in the Comments section. Bjorn Svendsen, Intern: In Thrill Me: […]
Writing History: ‘We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates
by Kailee Stiles
Ta-Nehisi Coates will be the first to tell you that his road to becoming a celebrated essayist, author, and staff writer at The Atlantic began with failure. Failure to keep a job. Failure to graduate college. Failure to write exactly what he felt needed to be said. So begins his recent essay collection, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (Random House, 367), which, contrary to Coates’ inauspicious start, cements his reputation as a gifted, iconoclastic writer and serves as required reading for anyone concerned about how, and when, black lives have (not) mattered in American history. The […]
A Reckoning with the Past: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI’ by David Grann
by Kailee Stiles
In a time where many of us are revising our understanding of American history, David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday, 339), presents another world of facts some have attempted to forget. The book, a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, is a work of stunning archival research whose prose is as laudable as it is grisly. From the outset, Grann’s book proves a necessary journalistic exposé – one that was years in the making – about a campaign to marry and then murder Osage Indians on […]
Giving Thanks: ‘Old Men at Sea’ by Andrew D. Cohen
by editor
Presented here is an essay we published back in our Spring 2016 Issue that we feel displays a sense of tenderness and empathy appropriate for this Thanksgiving holiday. We hope you’ll enjoy reading “Old Men at Sea” by Andrew D. Cohen in its entirety: I’m driving my sons, nine and almost six, to their small, alternative private school here in Portland, Oregon, a school we send them to for the same reason we don’t let them watch television or use the computer—to keep back the world and its anguish for a few more years— even though some part of me, […]
The Language of Trauma: “Incest” by Christine Angot
by Rebecca Rand
When I started reading Christine Angot’s Incest (207 pages; Archipelago Books), I wondered whether its erratic style was simply the result of how the French language, translated closely, sounds in English. But I soon discovered that it’s not just the translation: French and English-speaking readers alike have found Angot’s book untidy and difficult to decipher. From an artistic point of view, I must commend the translator, Tess Lewis, for resisting the urge to force Angot’s narrative into coherent and clear prose. Rather, her English translation of Incest strives to replicate the same frazzled reading experience as the original French. Incest […]