A night of violence is routine, expected, and devastating in Francisco Maciel’s literary novel There’s No Point in Dying. There is a favela (slum) in the birthplace of samba. At its center are three bars. They’re close enough that... Read More

A man is tasked with finding a missing painting in Naomi Hirahara’s historical novel "Crown City". While adrift in grief, Ryui is offered a job in California by his father’s former client. After a harrowing voyage from Japan, he... Read More

An elder shares her story in Chi Zijian’s reflective novel "The Last Quarter of the Moon". An unnamed Evenki woman laments the loss represented by her home’s emptiness. Her family voted to leave their mountains; modernization... Read More

A first-time grandmother reckons with the ways she retreated from herself in Hollay Ghadery’s melancholy but hopeful novel The Unraveling of Ou. Minoo’s strict, conservative mother ingrained in her the belief that she was shameful,... Read More

A determined Ethiopian woman enters the fight for Eritrean independence in Donica Merhazion’s riveting historical novel "Born at the End of the World". To escape an arranged marriage, Elen leaves Ethiopia for Eritrea. There, her aunt... Read More

A woman gathers her courage to invite a bestselling author to visit her struggling town in Jan Stites’s gentle novel "Becoming Felicity". A lifelong resident of Loon, Cass is devastated to learn that its library will close without... Read More

"Lessons in Drag" started as a performance by LaWhore Vagistan, the drag persona of academic Kareem Khubchandani. In it, she stages Khubchandani’s ethnographic research into accents, aunties, appropriation, and other topics connected... Read More

Extrapolating consumerism’s effects on society to their most extreme ends, "Virtuality" is an intricate speculative novel. A broadcast outage threatens to lead to a global economic crisis in Derek Cressman’s speculative novel... Read More