Vu Tran’s story, “Vagaries,” first appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Fall 2004 issue. The girl, when Chau first sees her, looks restless. She sits in the restaurant’s crowded patio under a table umbrella that shades her from the bright noon sun. One arm remains in an intrusive spot of sunlight and looks severed from the […]
“The day we left the pineapple fields /Mother cried.”
The Pineapple Fields Read More »
One of the most absolutely electric scenes in Susan Choi’s fifth novel Trust Exercise (Henry Holt and Co., 2019) takes place fairly early-on in the book. Sarah and David are sophomores at an elite performing arts high school. They’re fifteen, and the previous summer, they entered into an intense relationship. But after a series of misunderstandings,
On the “Competing Narratives” of Trust Exercise: An Interview with Susan Choi Read More »
No one these days can be unaware of the complex problems of water degradation, toxic waste, species extinction, soil and forest depletion, desertification, acid rain, and the “greenhouse” effect. As Rebecca Solnit has remarked, “the landscape itself is no longer an aesthetic refuge, but a battle ground.”
The Ecological Imperative: Making Art as if the World Mattered Read More »
Chidelia Edochie’s story, “The King of Hispaniola,” first appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review‘s Winter 2012 issue. I spent that Christmas Eve with my schoolmate Bibi and her parents at the National Palace, comparing the sizes of presents and our thirteen-year-old breasts with the other daughters of cabinet members and businessmen. All over Port-au-Prince younger
The King of Hispaniola Read More »
Note the first rule of an Oyeyemi book: there are many ways of seeing—nothing is more arrogant than trusting only one set of eyes.
Behind the Forbidden Door: A Review of Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread Read More »
While grabbing more bags from the basement, overhear one of your co-workers mentioning to a customer that the book they are buying was written by a bookseller at this very store! Hear another co-worker chime in that the book is “amazing,” and feel so much warmth in your heart that you could cry. Then hide
The Ten Stages of Selling Your Debut Novel at the Bookstore Where You Work Read More »
Please join Michigan Quarterly Review in celebrating World Otter Day all weekend long, with this poem from our Summer 2016 issue by Natalia Romero. Lobita El lobo blanco se hundió en el agua de color púrpura con la tarde. Una alegría sin sonido más que el desprenderse de algunas matas del arroyo. No volverá. Pero esa
I began looking into how things can go so wrong in taxidermy. The placement of eyes is so important; even if you screw up just a little, the animals can go crosseyed.
“Writing into the Surprise:” An Interview with Kristen Arnett Read More »
Guided by poets including Shakespeare, Homer, and Milton, Principles of Economics asks: can we stave off or transform grief by creating a faithful copy of the departed, by remembering everything in the manner of Borges’s Funes?
“Engraft You New:” A Review of Kristen Case’s Principles of Economics Read More »
