Indie Lit Round-Up: What to Read This Weekend [Vol 25: Nov 20]
The Coil Nov 20, 2020 · 3 min read
Coil editor Leah Angstman rounds up the best literary pieces from the indie Internet for you to read this weekend.
There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet to read. Here, let me help you wade through the crap to get to the good stuff. This recurring column features stories, reviews, poems, interviews, essays, and literary whatnot that you might have missed, and you can come back every weekend for new great reads.
“The last fanfiction I ever wrote was updated in August 2013.” | HANNAH COHEN talks about cringey fanfic, Internet teenhood, and writing for joy vs. prestige in “The Last Fanfiction I Ever Wrote” at The Offing.
“For the middle of the night, sneaking out of your bed, wide awake and hungry: a peach, leftover spaghetti, the last six cookies in the package.” | HANNAH GRIECO talks about comfort food for all of life’s moments in “The Last Six Cookies in the Package” at The Longleaf Review.
“My near life-long love of Ellen Ripley began with a VCR, and a federal offense committed by my mother.” | KALI WHITE VANBAALE talks 1986, Aliens, and a feminist icon in “I’m Happy to Disappoint You: A Gen X Girl’s Undying Love for Ellen Ripley” at Bright Wall/Dark Room.
“Prompt: Write a story built around a single image — something complicated you could hold in your field of vision all at once.” | KAJ TANAKA has a new Lessons from a Distance with “WYSIWYG (A Piece of Writing in Which What You See Is What You Get)” at Pidgeonholes.
“Objective: To consider how foils showcase Hamlet’s flaws and discuss how these flaws shape the tragedy’s plot and underscore its themes.” | MELISSA OSTROM has a heartbreaking teenager vs. teacher lens in “Hamlet Who?” at Porcupine Literary.
“I decide to move more / slowly, consciously taking my time” | TRISH HOPKINSON has a coronavirus poem, “Paused,” up at Juniper: A Poetry Journal.
“She was watching a movie with one of her lovers, Antoni.” | ALEXANDER CHEE has a great short story about the ghost of a former North Korean diplomat making his way back to the woman he loved in Leipzig, Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Did You Die at Home?” in T Magazine.
“‘It’s your night to watch the basement, Carly,’ my father says, sitting on the puffed blue comforter covering my parents’ bed.” | COREY FARRENKOPF has a strange short story, “What Friends Don’t Tell Friends about Basements,” over at Bourbon Penn.
“Somehow, despite our living in the age of Twitter and texting and shout-outs and memes, the cultural imperative that bigger is better is still going strong, particularly in the literary world.” | BRIAN EVENSON reviews DAVID HOLLANDER in “End Times Exit Strategy: Fractals, Philosophy, and Ultimate Frisbee in David Hollander’s Anthropica” at Los Angeles Review of Books.
“Mary plays MASH at the bottom of the lake.” | MEGHAN PHILLIPS will wreck you with “Rules” at Matchbook.