February 22
What does it mean to have, or to love, a black body? Taking on the challenge of interpreting the black body's dramatic role in American culture, Nana-Ama Danquah's anthology The Black Body asks thirty black, white, and biracial contributors—award-winning actors, artists, writers, and comedians—including voices as varied as President Obama's inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander, actor and bestselling author Hill Harper, and former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts.
As part of our celebration of Black History Month, we're publishing Danquah's introduction to The Black Body here on the blog. It's a wise and thoughtful piece that delves into complex questions of bodies, blackness, and perception. We hope you'll enjoy.
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January 29
You may know Franz Kafka's "The Trial," a tale of nightmarish bureaucracy, but do you know Anton Chekhov's? Written in 1881, when Chekhov was only twenty-one, it contains the germ of much that would later come to be considered Chekhovian: petty cruelty, country life, and the inability of one generation to come to terms with the other. And because it's Chekhov's birthday today, we're publishing his short story, "The Trial," exclusively here in the blog. We hope you enjoy, if enjoy is indeed the word.
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January 25
Introducing Three Cheers, a new series in which Seven Stories authors dish on three books that have inspired them over the course of their writing careers. In this installment, Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart and, most recently, The Cuban Club, dusts off some lesser known works of fiction for his three picks.
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January 18
There’s also the question of stakes. Even before Walsh knows the stakes of what he’s doing, he conveys a kind of urgency. His encounter with this unbearable situation comes across on the page. It’s so honest.
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January 16
Introducing a new feature on the Seven Stories blog: an indie bookstore round-up, in which staff and other members of our community write a few words on their other favorite independent bookstores. This week, Ben Hillin writes about Topos, in Ridgewood, Queens.
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