Issue 36
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I Heard Her Call My Name: An interview with Lucy Sante
interview by Vicky Oliver and Charlotte Slivka
Lucy Sante has had a long and decorated career as a chronicler of the arts and their environments. From her books including Low Life, Evidence, and Kill All Your Darlings and the pages of the New York Review of Books, she has amassed a devoted readership of her criticism and cultural commentary, assiduously sharp and brimming with curiosity. But for a long time, while in pursuit of artistic truth, she felt unsure of her place, eventually coming to understand that she was evading the truth of her own gender identity.
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On Language, Connection, and Peculiar Literature: an Interview with Claire Donato
by LIT Fiction Editor, Jerakah Greene
THE CULT OF CLAIRE DONATO
I first met Claire Donato through Pratt Institute, where many of my friends have studied with her. Before we met in person, I had heard dozens of stories about her teaching ethics, her fascination with poetry and literature on the internet-plane, and her ghostly Victorian style. I admit that I idolized her a bit; she is the kind of literary citizen everyone should aspire to be, a fixture of the New York literary scene, with impeccable taste in film and aesthetics (she recently curated a diptych of Bonjour Tristesse and David Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me at Roxy Cinema,
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Time Flows Like Water; Sunshine For 10,000 Miles, A Love That Fills The Bed; Hello, September
Three Poems by A Hua, translated from the Chinese by Xuelan Su and Kathy Z. Fan
Time Flows Like Water
Use growth rings to tell the story. Get pine resin to seal it in history.
Leave the stump for egrets to perch on.At Weishan Lake, as spring winds blow away the chaos of March,
wetlands burst with birdsong and flower-scent,leaves jostled by rain and pearls of dew become like small boats that bob and sway.
… later, after lake waters recede,
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Country Ghosts
art by Mia Broecke, "eye"
by Francesca Diano, translated from the Italian by Laura Valeri
The two di Franco sisters lived alone. The younger one, all the same old, was rather short, with a big long nose, eyes like two boiled eggs, and hair dyed a brick red color. The older sister was tall and lanky, with white hair so thin that it showed the rosy hue of her scalp, wore her hair in a bun – a tiny little bun that looked like a bird’s nest. They had a big beautiful house downtown,
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There and Back and Back Again Again
photo by Tony Wallin-Soto
by George Choundas
You walk briskly to catch the train. Couple of blocks to go. Running late. Even chances you’ll make it. Then you see something fifty yards ahead, darting into your path from a side street. It’s another commuter, also running late. He’s looking at his wristwatch and jittery. Like you, he vibrates as much he moves, clearly fraught with decisional anguish, debating whether to break into a sprint. Then he turns and catches sight of you. In a moment’s glance, he appraises. He notes you’re walking and not running, and presumably gathers up indications of credibility—who knows,
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What is Special About Dusk
photo collection of the author
by Katiy Heath
A cloud would soon billow out, a considerable mass, smoky red; a disorientating blanket of color, devilish red, divine red, nuclear and unnatural. Yet nature is what would send red into our tender hearts on the afternoon of this annular eclipse. From the Latin word annulus, meaning little ring. Like a hula hoop, a donut, a CD. A little band of light left after the moon moves across the sun, obstructing all but a six percent sliver. Little—130 miles wide—ring of fire that we didn’t have to put ourselves in the path of,
