Book Reviews

Dive into book reviews, epic reading lists or explore literary culture. The inside scoop for writers and readers of fiction and poetry.

Latest Book Reviews

New and classic reviews for all you book lovers.

John of John by Douglas Stuart — book cover
Book Review · 7 May 2026
John of John by Douglas Stuart

The Booker-winning author of Shuggie Bain trades Glasgow tenements for the Isle of Harris. A review of the most-anticipated Scottish novel of 2026.

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Literary Reviews
2026 International Booker Prize shortlist
Literary Prizes · 2026
Why the 2026 International Booker Shortlist Marks a Quiet Revolution

Six titles. Four debut novelists. Three languages new to the prize. A shortlist that looks unlike any before it.

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New · Flash Fiction & Short Fiction

It’s cool to read about things you’re interested in, sometimes.

Craft · Practical Guide
How to Write Flash Fiction
The specific techniques that make compressed short fiction work. Not rules — tools. One image, one object, one thing. The ending that lands instead of resolves.
Read → Reading List · Short Fiction
Short Fiction Examples — Four Stories That Show What the Form Can Do
Carver, Moore, McEwan, Paley. Four writers, four techniques, four reasons the short form stays with you longer than the novel.
Read → Reading List · Flash Fiction
The Best Flash Fiction Stories — A Reading List
Saunders, Kincaid, Hempel, Davis, Hemingway. Five stories under 1,500 words that do more than most novels. The essential flash fiction reading list.
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Reading Lists · Where to start and what to read next

Get a reading list in your life.

What I'm reading
Reading Column · March 2026
What I’m Reading — Bukowski, Baldwin, Rooney, Lynch, Everett
Five writers keeping me company right now. No theme. Just what I reached for.
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 Best flash fiction collections
Reading List
The Best Flash Fiction Collections — Essential Reading
The collections that define the form. Where to start if you’re new to flash, and where to go deeper if you’re not.
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 Best flash fiction 2025
Annual Picks · 2025
The Best Flash Fiction of 2025 — Ten Picks
A personal selection of the ten best flash pieces published in 2025 — chosen for formal precision and emotional impact.
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 Books like Raymond Carver
Reading List · Recommendations
Best Books If You Like Raymond Carver — 12 Recommendations
If Carver is your entry point into minimalist fiction, these are the twelve writers to read next.
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Culture · What’s happening in the literary world

Essays on the state of contemporary literature, poetry, and publishing: useful to know.

Culture · 2026
Literary Fiction in 2026: What the Best New Books Are Actually Doing
The trends worth paying attention to, the ones worth ignoring, and what the most interesting new fiction is doing with form.
Read → Culture · Poetry
Is Poetry Dying? What the Evidence Actually Says in 2026
The perennial question asked again with actual data. What the readership numbers, prize culture and Substack poetry boom tell us.
Read → Culture · Publishing
The Best Literary Magazines for Flash Fiction Submissions
Which journals are doing the most interesting work with flash fiction right now, and why they matter to the form.
Read → Culture · Prizes
What Is the Pushcart Prize?
The most important prize in American small-press publishing. What it is, how it works, and what a nomination actually means for a writer.
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Interviews · Writers with their craft

Go beyond: essential literary interviews, great writers and their words.

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Vladimir NabokovThe Paris Review
Vladimir Nabokov — The Art of Fiction No. 40
On style, memory and the sentence as architecture. One of the most celebrated literary interviews ever published.
Read the interview → Raymond CarverThe Paris Review
Raymond Carver — The Art of Fiction No. 76
On minimalism, rewriting, and what it means to write from inside a working-class life. Essential.
Read the interview → Ernest HemingwayThe Paris Review
Ernest Hemingway — The Art of Fiction No. 21
The original interview on the iceberg theory and how omission became a structural principle for compressed fiction.
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