Laura Bast

If you’re into Lydia Davis, you’ll find exactly what you’d expect to in Can’t and Won’t, her first collection since Collected Stories was published five years ago. If you’re not, here’s what you need to know: her stories aren’t really stories, they’re snippets; usually have no characters beyond the “I” (the speaker); the majority are […]

Late last year Jason Guriel’s review of Memorial, a loose translation of The Illiad by Alice Oswald, became the grounds of a lit crit wrestling match. Poet-critic Helen Guri took Guriel down, calling the review “dismissive,” “snide,” and anti-feminist. Poet-critic Steward Cole picked Guriel back up, calling Guri’s review “violently distorting.” And then on Twitter […]

Remember in undergrad when you worked on the school newspaper? Doesn’t matter. When you read this, you’ll relive those days whether you lived them in the first place or not—that’s how familiar Michael Hingston’s The Dilettantes, set on the campus of Simon Fraser, feels. It’s a funny, fast read and its portrait of university life […]