“Nothing Happens”

Clare Sestanovich

When the Mueller report was released in April 2019, you could buy it in bookstores. A lot of people did: it quickly climbed to the top of the Times Best Seller list. In addition to being explained by journalists, the report was evaluated by literary critics, including Dwight Garner, veteran of the Times book review, and Michiko Kakutani, his former colleague, whose power has turned her name into a verb....

“Here Comes the Break” | On Literary Fiction Today

Clare Sestanovich

As we were preparing to launch this magazine, we told our first cohort of writers not to pitch us anything about contemporary fiction. We were bored by it, we said — mostly but not entirely tongue-in-cheek.  This issue, we’re making an exception. It seems to us that the literary ground has shifted, and the forms and themes considered most exciting just a few years ago are now all but exhausted....

Objects of Desire | Fiction

Clare Sestanovich

  The two of them live in a small apartment, small enough that it is impossible to ever be truly out of sight. In the room that is both the living room and the bedroom, there is a lofted bed. They have learned, faster than they anticipated, to navigate the ladder in half-sleep, when one of them needs to pee or retrieve a glass of water or confiscate the cat’s...