What She's Reading Now: Roxane Gay

I’m reading a lot of great work online these days. With so many great books available, it’s easy to forget that there’s a vibrant independent publishing community that makes the most of the power and reach of the Internet.

Paula Bomer is the best writer you’ve never heard of. Motherhood is often the subject of her stories, and she fiercely lays bare the joys, frustrations, and small sorrows of motherhood and marriage. The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn in JMWW Magazine, tells the story of a mother of two girls reflecting on her life and marriage while she steals away to a hotel for a night but the story is so much more than that as it touches on issues of class, race, and ultimately asks the question, “What is happiness?” In Second Son, at PANK, (full disclosure, I’m the co-editor of PANK so I have a natural bias toward this story) the narrator laments that she loves her second son less than her first son Bertie. Paula writes, “He wasn’t her everything anymore, too, and that was no fault of his. No she wanted him to be her baby forever, forever. She wanted him, and no one else, she wanted him all over again,” in a moment of uncomfortable honesty. Paula’s first short story collection, Baby, which is brutal and beautiful and a true marvel, is available for pre-order from Word Riot Press. You want to read this book, I promise you.

xTx is a fearless writer who can write about anything with a savage grace. In her e-book, Nobody Trusts a Black Magician, she tells stories that are relatable, naked, honest and express the desires and anxieties many people have but often don’t acknowledge. The stories I enjoyed most were violent yet sweet, beautiful but ugly and reflecting both love and a yearning for things we want but can’t have. If ever there were a writer who could perfectly capture the essence of yearning, it would be xTx. The Strain of Collusion in Smokelong Quarterly, is a heartbreaking portrait of a relationship between an aunt and a niece infected with MRSA. There is a moment, in the story, where the aunt and her niece hide from the rest of the family and xTx magically transports the reader. “We run and hide with the flowers in a cave made by us and where we are; a colluded embrace. The cave is a moment fooling no one, but we stay. The crowd splits, breaks; we hear their calls in the distance. The lights of the lanterns flickering small and urgent, running through the trees.” That’s what’s most powerful about her writing. No matter what she writes about, she takes you to unexpected and unique places.

Amber Noelle Sparks is fascinated by history, taxonomies, the classification of things and weaving these interests into her stories. She brings a unique voice to her fiction. A History of Heart Disease, in Wigleaf, is not at all a history of heart disease, and yet it is as the rather irredeemable protagonist, Glen, watches the men in his life die before their time while he flounders through his life. This is a story where we’re told what we need to know when we need to know it. The last line, “Glen feels the warmth of his daughter's hand, like a damp little bird, feels the life ticking and nudging against his own,” allows us to believe there might be redemption for the rather irredeemable after all. The Chemistry of Objects at Necessary Fiction, is a history of objects in three parts, a story that is sophisticated and demonstrates the beauty of word play in short fiction. When I think of Amber’s writing, I often think of the word elegance, as demonstrate when she writes, “Or to put it another way: a bullet will travel along a certain path at a certain velocity, propelled by a striking device and a firing pin. When it reaches the heart it will not stop but merely slow as it plows through tissue, disconnects nerves and stifles breath and life.”

Ethel Rohan can best be described as a soulful writer and whenever I see her name in a magazine, I know I will be moved by her words. Reduced), in Dark Sky Magazine, is a portrait of a marriage where the problems are obvious but unstated, as a woman numbs herself with wine in the face of her husband’s displeasure. In All There, Waiting, a couple struggles with the loss of a child while the father’s grief has turned into inconsolable rage and the mother’s grief has turned into impatience and frustration. Ethel’s short stories are always full of intense emotion, but as a writer, Ethel knows how to hold her readers’ hearts safely in the palms of her hands.

Erin Fitzgerald is what I like to think of as a meticulous writer. Her stories are always precise and subtle and the inevitable conclusion of each story always overwhelms. Fraud, in Necessary Fiction, is told in five parts. While each part seems to tell a different story, each part, by the end, works in concert in really smart, interesting ways. There Are Always Children, at elimae, is a very brief fiction that moves at a breathless place. The story relies more on our assumptions than anything else because the reader is thrown into the middle of a scene with very little information and then there is the perfect last line, “I hear the soft murmur of young children, insisting that adults reply,” that offers no conclusion but resonates nonetheless.

These five women are just a small fraction of the fantastic writers publishing online, but they are, undoubtedly, among the best.