Criticism & Features

It’s hard to fathom now, but just over 100 years ago the novelist Herman Melville had sunk into obscurity. Wildly popular at one point in his career, the author nevertheless

Paul Hlava Ceballos’s banana [ ] (University of Pittsburgh Press), born of Banana [ ______ ] / we pilot the blood, his collaboration with poet Quenton Baker and creative scholar Christina

Namwali Serpell is an evocative, erudite, and original writer. She mixes Gothic and Afrofuturist styles in The Old Drift, her first novel, a three-family saga that spans nearly two centuries

“Dancers do not work from texts because there are no texts,” Jennifer Homans writes in her resplendent biography, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (Random House). “Dances are passed… from

Jazmina Barrera’s Linea Nigra (Two Lines Press) is a gorgeous book of insightful, often poetic essays. It’s the autobiography of a woman-identified writer who is deeply examining multiple creative acts