Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado appears in the following:

Carmen Maria Machado Is Using The Word 'Abusive'

Wednesday, February 05, 2020

The writer reflects on her first relationship with a woman, finding the words to talk about experiencing abuse, and the process of writing it all down in her memoir.

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We All Live In The Dark, But Some Of Us Live In 'The Dark Dark'

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Samantha Hunt's new story collection dissects the unique strangeness of women's lives, mixing eerie fantasy with solid literary sensibility and a knack for strange and lovely set pieces.

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An American Abroad Searches For Self In 'Florence In Ecstasy'

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Jessie Chaffee's novel about a troubled young American woman in Florence is beautiful and exhausting; stick with it, and you'll find a thoughtful reexamination of a classic trope, the American abroad.

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'The Book Of Joan' Is A Dizzying, Dystopian Genre Mashup

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Lidia Yuknavitch reimagines Joan of Arc as a freedom fighter on a blighted future earth, setting herself against the charismatic ruler of a satellite colony of nearly unrecognizably mutated humans.

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Rediscovering Surrealist Leonora Carrington's Delights And Disturbances

Saturday, April 08, 2017

Carrington's complete short stories have just been published, along with a re-release of her wrenching memoir Down Below. She's one of many mid-20th century female writers now reaching new audiences.

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Horror Tropes And Human Sadness In 'Universal Harvester'

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Musician and author John Darnielle's new Universal Harvester follows three connected stories in three different eras, in an unsettling fairy tale about mysterious images that appear on video tapes.

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'Fish In Exile' Is A Chronicle Of Grief Barely Survived

Tuesday, November 08, 2016

In Vi Khi Nao's new novel, a husband and wife are falling apart after losing their two children in a terrible accident. Nao's poetic chops are on full display in this immersive, difficult book.

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Is 'You Are Having A Good Time' Beautiful Or Grotesque? Yes

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Amie Barrodale's debut collection is packed with ill-advised relationships and broken, mean characters in ugly, funny scenarios; these stories live at the intersection of discomfort and pleasure.

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'The Queue' Carries On A Dystopian Lineage

Thursday, May 05, 2016

Basma Abdel Aziz's new novel is set in an unspecified Middle Eastern city, where an endless line snakes back from the mysterious Gate where citizens await pronouncements from a sinister government.

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'Plain Houses' Is A Spellbinding Story Of Witchcraft And Disobedience

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Julia Franks' debut novel is set in Depression-era North Carolina, where young farm wife Irenie is sneaking off to the woods for moments away from her husband — who's convinced his wife is a witch.

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Gothic Family Drama At 'The Border Of Paradise'

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Esme Weijun Wang's novel — packed with family secrets, betrayals, a decaying house and a dramatic fire — could have seemed pulpy in lesser hands. But her restrained, beautiful prose makes it work.

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Traditional Tropes Turn Eerie In Punishing, Subtle 'Horses'

Saturday, February 20, 2016

The stories that bookend Brian Evenson's newest collection, A Collapse of Horses, are connected by two unsettling elements. The first is an image: a man's gunshot leg leaving a bloody swath across the flank of a horse. In Western-genre-infused "Black Bark," this image exists in real life — or as ...

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'The Crooked House' Is Haunted, In A World That Denies Ghosts

Sunday, January 17, 2016

On a freezing June night, fourteen-year-old Esme Grace huddles in her upper-floor bedroom as a shotgun's blast reverberates over and over in the bowels of her family's lopsided, isolated house. Afterwards, her three siblings and mother lie dead; her father alive but damaged beyond speech and thought by a seemingly ...

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'The Blizzard' May Leave You Cold

Saturday, December 05, 2015

Doctor Platon Ilich Garin, the protagonist of Vladimir Sorokin's The Blizzard, needs a ride. He has in his possession a vaccine to end a zombie outbreak in a distant village, where the dead are rising from beneath the earth of the winter-frozen cemeteries. He is — so he thinks — ...

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Complex, Generational Music In Lyrical 'Daughters'

Tuesday, August 04, 2015

From childhood, The Daughters' Lulu has been a creature of music, able to discern the notes of her surroundings on whim and command: The B-minor of a knife striking a glass, the pitch of different car horns, the musical composition of a waiter's dropped tray. As an adult, she is ...

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The Monstrous And The Beautiful Dance In 'White Van'

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

In the opening chapter of Wolf in White Van, the debut novel from singer-songwriter John Darnielle, protagonist Sean Phillips descends into a memory, and imagines other paths within it. "There are several possibilities," he tells us of a hallway in his family's home, with its many doors and secrets. "They ...

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Michel Faber's 'Crimson' Gave Teen A New Sense Of Possibility

Sunday, June 29, 2014

As a teenager, I believed in God, but I didn't know what he wanted from me. I attended Bible study, befriended the evangelical kids from my school and listened to the Christian rap group dcTalk. I read the Bible and books about staying pure. I wondered if the weird, queasy ...

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