By Evan P. Schneider Alexis M. Smith's second novel, Marrow Island, was just named one of six winners of a 2017 Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Award. Evan P. Schneider chats with Smith about what she learned by writing the new novel, and why we choose the work we do—or why it chooses us. (Illustration by Zachary Schomburg)
By Dan DeWeese Two translated books published by Melville House in 2016 may resonate differently for American readers in 2017.
By Matthew Stahlman In 2013, Joanna Newsom married a comedian. Why didn't a fan expect her next album, Divers, to be any good? And why didn't he want it to be?
By M. Allen Cunningham In 2015, a Portland writer wrote a note of thanks to John Berger. Berger wrote back.
By Matthew Kauffman Smith Staff discovered the following article in the magazine's email spam folder. It appears to be yet another "music tournament," this one written in November. In it, the author prematurely names the best instrumental album of 2016.
By Patrick McGinty In Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File, John Edgar Wideman thinks his way through multiple problems at once.
By Matthew Stahlman During a recent Title IX case and throughout its fallout, one of the consistent values of identifying as a "feminist" was as a defense against other feminists.
By Wendy Bourgeois A woman was almost president. She could not look expensive without class critique. She could not look butch. She could not look as if she cared, but it was absolutely forbidden for her to look as if she didn't. The higher the stakes, the more of a sartorial knife's edge she had to walk.
Reviews, reflections, conversations.
Crafted, designed, choreographed, performed.
Art form of the twentieth century.
Stolen licks and backstage passes.
Investigations and lived experience.
Language, pushed.