Hideo Yokohama’s masterpiece Seventeen is set in a fictional newspaper company covering the real-life 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet in a mountainous region of Japan. The accident happened before I moved to Japan, but it is a major (well, infamous)...
"It has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable, and that it is important to tell people what really happens in wars." —Marie Colvin Watch a video about the story behind In...
In the fall of 2013 I received a submission from one of the smartest, loveliest agents I know, Katherine Fausset at Curtis Brown. At first glance it seemed unlikely—a posthumous story collection from a little known writer. But then I saw her name: Lucia...
Lucia Berlin was a Western writer, by which I do not mean a genre writer of cowboy tales like Zane Grey or the younger Elmore Leonard, but that her stories, with only a few exceptions, are situated west of the Great Plains or in...
Evening in Paradise is a collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation, Lucia Berlin. After reading them, Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote, "Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize." The stories take us from Texas...
“I’ve lived so many places it’s ridiculous . . . and because I moved so much, place is very, very important to me. I’m always looking . . . looking for home.” —Lucia Berlin, interview (2003) The first writer I ever watched at work was my...
Enter the FSG Classics Sweepstakes for a chance to win a FSG tote bag, plus some of our favorite classics that remain relevant and important years after publication. The list of books includes: • The Complete Stories by Flannery...
In this special Halloween-themed edition of Work in Progress, we feature the voices of our growing list of female authors who explore the otherworldly and spooky side of literature in innovative and chilling ways. We asked them to write about the scariest story (book,...
Spanning eras, continents, and genres, CoDex 1962—twenty years in the making—is Icelandic author Sjón's epic three-part masterpiece. Josef Löwe, the narrator, was born in 1962—the same year, the same moment, even, as Sjón. Josef’s story, however, stretches back decades in the...
Gretchen and Steve have been married for a long time. Living in San Francisco, recently separated, with two children and demanding jobs, they’ve started going to a marriage counselor. Unfolding over the course of ten months and taking place entirely in the marriage counselor’s...
Enter a chance to win a hardcover copy of The Flame, Leonard Cohen's final collection of poems, lyrics, and drawings, and a beautiful letterpressed poster of one of his poems! {{FORM-OCTSWEEPS}}
Aden Grace Sawyer, the heroine—somehow, the word “protagonist” doesn’t do her justice—of John Wray’s fifth novel, Godsend, has a great deal in common with John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” who was, for a time, the most reviled American traitor since...
“I would like to make an assertion that I cannot prove but am certain is true. Within a fifty-kilometer radius of where I am writing this Prologue, someone somewhere is either playing or listening to Chopin’s music . . . Whatever the time zone,...
It is rare for a literary critic to remain alive for readers decades after his death—even rarer than for a novelist or a poet. Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) belonged to what Randall Jarrell called “the age of criticism,” a time when the analysis and judgment...
“There are very, very few people who occupy the ground that Leonard Cohen walks on.” —BONO The Flame is the final work from Leonard Cohen, the revered poet and musician whose fans span generations and whose work is celebrated throughout the world....
I first came to know Jeff Jackson’s work when I encountered his powerfully original and moving debut novel, Mira Corpora, which Two Dollar Radio published in 2013. You have never read anything like this before, I would tell friends as I...
In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades...
The ravens at the Tower of London are of mighty importance: rumor has it that if a raven from the Tower should ever leave, the city will fall. The title of Ravenmaster, therefore, is a serious title indeed, and after decades of serving the...
Spanning eras, continents, and genres, CoDex 1962—twenty years in the making—is Icelandic author Sjón's epic three-part masterpiece. Josef Löwe, the narrator, was born in 1962—the same year, the same moment even, as Sjón. Josef's story, however, stretches back decades in the...
