A Library of Sorts,A Lineage
A curated collection of essential texts spanning literature, theory, politics, and philosophy. An ongoing project—your suggestions are deeply appreciated.
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L I B R A R Y ( 61 )
Listen and Learn: Poetry Collection as Concept Album— Author of Scream / Queen encourages poets to consider world-building like compiling a concept album
Poetry & PoeticsRead
On Trauma and the Book-Length Project— Encourages writers to provide varied points of entry into books on trauma
Memoir & TraumaRead
Not All Stories Are Straight: Circular and Nested Structures From Asian Storytelling— Examines how nonwestern storytelling traditions embrace nonlinearity beyond the hero's journey
Fiction CraftRead
The Joy of Holding Back: The East Asian Four-Act Structure— Explores how a fourth act can reveal unseen relationships and allow writers to experience the joy of holding back
Fiction CraftRead
What Listening Has Taught Me: The Future Is Shaped by What We Remember— Oral historian considers the nested memories she belongs to and how memory shapes the present
Memoir & TraumaRead
Writing About Family: The Kitchen Drawer— How pockets of place can convey a larger sense of home
Memoir & TraumaRead
Writing About Family: Lessons— Advice on how to write about family by considering lessons learned over a lifetime
Memoir & TraumaRead
Writing About Family: Impossible Conversations— Advice on how to write about family by imagining fictive dialogues
Memoir & TraumaRead
Embodied Writing: One Body, Many Parts— Author of Us From Nothing revises his thinking about the role of the body in writing
Writing ProcessRead
Embodied Writing: Breathe, Breathe, Breathe— An exercise to become mindful of the body's role in the act of writing
Writing ProcessRead
Desire, Physicality, Contradiction— Author of Freedom Is a Feast on bringing characters to life with unique voices
Fiction CraftRead
The Comedy of Short Fiction— Author of I'll Give You a Reason contemplates the common ground between a joke and a short story
Fiction CraftRead
Familiar Characters— Author of Short War contemplates the rewards of modeling minor characters on real people
Fiction CraftRead
Crayoned Fire: In Praise of Book-Length Poems— Author of Midwhistle on the enduring power and appeal of long poems
Poetry & PoeticsRead
What Herbie Hancock Taught Me About Formal Poetry— Author of Midwhistle contemplates the common ground between jazz music and poetry
Poetry & PoeticsRead
Endless Work: The Responsibilities and Pleasures of Translation— Explores the relationship between translation, labor, and love
Writing ProcessRead
The Power of Nerding Out— Craft Capsule on how role-playing games and obsessive interests fuel the writing life
Writing ProcessRead
Naming the Apophatic: The Poetics of Not Knowing— Author of Yaguareté White on multilingual poetry and the poetics of not knowing
Poetry & PoeticsRead
Copy and Paste: On Poetic Theft— On found poetry and the art of poetic borrowing
Poetry & PoeticsRead
Steal This Book
Political TheoryDownload
Necropolitics
Critical TheoryDownload
The Power of the Archive and its Limits
Critical TheoryDownload
Notes Toward a Politics of Location
Gender & SexualityDownload
The Oresteia
Classical LiteratureRead
Discourse on Colonialism
Race & ColonialismDownload
The Century
PhilosophyDownload
The Fall
PhilosophyDownload
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
PhilosophyDownload
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
Political TheoryDownload
The Role of the Writer in a New Nation
African LiteratureDownload
Myth, Literature and the African World
African LiteratureDownload
Decolonising the Mind
African LiteratureDownload
The African Imagination
African LiteratureDownload
In My Father's House
African LiteratureDownload
Writing Down the Vision
Caribbean LiteratureRead
On the Richness of Older Women's Stories
Contemporary LiteratureRead
A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read
Contemporary LiteratureRead
The Second Sex
Gender & SexualityDownload
Gender Trouble
Gender & SexualityDownload
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Gender & SexualityDownload
The Location of Culture
Race & ColonialismDownload
Can the Subaltern Speak?
Race & ColonialismDownload
Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Race & ColonialismDownload
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Critical TheoryDownload
Aesthetic Theory
Critical TheoryDownload
Écrits
Critical TheoryDownload
Projective Verse
Poetry & PoeticsDownload
When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision
Poetry & PoeticsDownload
The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History
Poetry & PoeticsDownload
The Task of the Translator
TranslationDownload
The Translator's Invisibility
TranslationDownload
Re-enchanting the World: Education, Wisdom, and Imagination
Essays & MemoirDownload
Searching for a New Self
Essays & MemoirDownload
Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God
Essays & MemoirDownload
Variations on the Right to Remain Silent
Essays & MemoirDownload
The Chase
Essays & MemoirDownload
Nothing Personal
Essays & MemoirDownload
Less Than One
Essays & MemoirDownload
Why Lecture?
Essays & MemoirRead
Lectures I Will Never Give
Essays & MemoirRead
The Noise of Time
Essays & MemoirDownload
This library benefits from link donations by Brandon Shimoda, Amy Barnes, Ellen Dillon, Ryan Ruby, Sasha Dugsdale, Tom Snarsky, Jennifer Calkins, and many others.
This is an ongoing project and your suggestions are deeply appreciated. Contact us to contribute to this growing collection.