Fiction Spotlight: Contributor Anne Valente

October 4, 2016, marked the publication date of Anne Valente’s debut novel, Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (William Morrow/HarperCollins), and already the novel has been named among the “Most Necessary Books for the End of 2016” by Ploughshares Magazine and the “Best Reads for October” by Refinery 29. Valente, however, is no newcomer to…

Fiction Spotlight: Margaret Luongo

I first became acquainted with Margaret Luongo when she drove the short distance from Hamilton, Ohio, to Cincinnati to read at a literary festival. In a dark bar full of half-drunk aspiring writers, she read from a story called “The War Artist” and cast a spell over all of us. She transported her audience to…

Fiction Spotlight: Becky Hagenston

Becky Hagenston’s third short story collection, Scavengers: Stories (University of Alaska Press) Scavengers was published mid-March, 2016. The collection won the Permafrost 2015 Book Prize in fiction, with Memorious favorite Benjamin Percy serving as final judge. Hagenston is no stranger to prestigious prizes. The associate professor of English at Mississippi State University has two previous…

Fiction Spotlight: Ranbir Singh Sidhu

We were lucky enough to snatch up Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s hilarious short story “‘Cross-eyes’ Thorpe Hits The Mark” for Memorious 25. Though he has spent the better part of the last two decades in Brooklyn and Crete, Sidhu is a writer with California in his blood. This is a component of his backstory—Sidhu was born…

Fiction Spotlight: Benjamin Percy

Way back in issue #7, Memorious published a knife-long work of fiction from Ben Percy. In the delightfully grotesque “Revival,” the young narrator and his friend consider what it means to be undead, and what hope there might be for a future with zombies in it. Tinged with horror and the desire for more to…

Fiction Spotlight: Tom Cooper

This week, Memorious contributor and short story rounder Tom Cooper releases his first novel, The Marauders (Crown), to a bevy of critical and popular acclaim. Born out of Cooper’s longstanding history with New Orleans, the book is a wry and sprawling study in character and setting, with the fictional port of Jeanette still logged with…

Fiction Spotlight: Anne Valente

In late September of 2014, Anne Valente released her first full short story collection, By Light We Knew Our Names (Dzanc Books), after winning a host of awards for her fiction, including Copper Nickel’s 2012 Fiction Prize and Dzanc Books’ 2011 Short Story Collection Competition. Prior to the anthology’s release, Valente had already established herself…

Fiction Spotlight: Ellen Litman

Ellen Litman’s debut novel Mannequin Girl (Norton 2014) follows her memorable story collection The Last Chicken in America, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award and for the Young Lions Fiction Award. Her turn to the novel brings us the protagonist Kat, a young Jewish girl growing up in the Soviet Union whose…

Fiction Spotlight: Contributing Editor Laura van den Berg’s Isle of Youth

Memorious’s contributing editor Laura van den Berg has had an exciting few months. Her story collection The Isle of Youth, published in November by FSG, has been celebrated by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, O. Magazine, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. Just last week, Laura was named the…

Big Loves: Andrew Ladd Discusses James Morrow

Today’s contributor to our Big Loves column is Andrew Ladd, the book reviews editor for the Ploughshares blog. His first novel, What Ends, won the AWP Prize in the Novel and is available now from New Issues Press. For many years, I had an instant answer when people asked me about my favorite book. For many more since,…