Avidly

First Sentence Fridays is a series that celebrates the prose and process of new books. About The Lay Down Yard: Eric Wertheimer's third book of poetry, The Lay Down Yard, collects poems that travel a geography of loss and repair, generating broken grammar

I was in the middle of an existential crisis when an old friend took me to see Anais Mitchell's smash hit musical Hadestown. The existential crisis wasn't about musicals. I thought I understood musicals. The crisis was about my job as an English professor

Dolly Parton was an American hair icon. She was also a moral beacon and one of three best white pop songwriters of the last sixty years (the other two are Carole King and Taylor Swift; this is science). 1 These things are connected. Dolly Parton's vast pa

First Sentence Fridays is a series focused on the style and experience of new books. About Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship: The history of disability rights is often told as a recent one, but it is not. In the wake of the American Rev

First Sentence Fridays celebrates the prose and process of new books. Peter Jaros's The Corporate Forms of Antebellum US Literature (Oxford UP) tells the story of the corporation in antebellum US law, literature, and culture. It unfolds a rich and varied

"First Sentence Fridays" is a new Avidly series highlighting the prose and process of new books. About The Turn: When Baxter, a young writer and recent college graduate, accepts a live-in nanny position for an affluent professor's family in the foothills

"First Sentence Fridays" is a new series at Avidly, highlighting the prose and process of new books. Avidly: What's the first sentence of your book? No cheating! Kate Washington: "Anchorless, my body floated free, jolted by cold as the surf tossed me back

"The nurse put him on my chest and he looked up at me, a wet wild creature who had crawled from a swamp, all eyes, eyes wide, and his cry was not hysterical, not a lament, but an earnest question: Are you here? Are you here for me?" -Rachel Kushner, The M

For lovers of Emily Bronte's classic 1847 gothic novel, Emerald Fennell's new film adaptation of "Wuthering Heights" is full of surprises, from the gratuitous public hanging at the movie's start, to the servants sneaking off to have kinky bridle sex in th

The 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays ended in elation or devastation, depending on what side of the ball and the 49th parallel you happened to be on. For us-two friends, former colleagues, and Filipino North American