Fifteen years ago, Electric Literature started as a print and digital quarterly journal during the glory days of the print magazine era. Our very first issue surpassed 10,000 copies in sales, we were stocked in newsstands and bookstores, and as an e-book. We were one of the first to publish literary fiction using an online platform, winning the 2011 National Book Foundation Prize for Innovations in Reading. In that decade and a half, we’ve published over 10,000 articles on our website, including fiction, poetry, cultural criticism, personal essays, literary news, reviews, reading lists, author interviews, flash prose, and graphic narratives. The work we’ve published is taught in schools across the world and have won prizes (Best American Series, the Pushcart Prize, Best Canadian Short Stories, The Best of the Small Presses, and the O. Henry Prize). In 2022, we were awarded the Whiting Foundation’s Digital Literary Magazine Prize. Call us overachievers. A lot has changed in 15 years, but the one constant is our dedication to publishing writing that is intelligent and unpretentious.
To celebrate 15 years of Electric Literature, we’re throwing a masquerade for you, our readers, in Brooklyn on October 18th. It’s not a birthday party without cake and we’ll have a photo booth, free books, free masks, an open bar, and some of our favorite authors in attendance.
In honor of our achievements, we’re spotlighting our 15 most popular posts of all time. Whether it’s a first look or a second glance, dive into our most popular articles, starting with number 15:
31 Fairly Obscure Literary Monsters by JW McCormack
Peek between your fingers. Check underneath your bed. Open the closet doors and peer into the dark. This list examines the monsters of classic literature that don’t often make it to the forefront of our nightmares. From the featureless man in Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” to Čapek’s aquatic newts in his political fantasy War with the Newts, these monsters are quieter on the literary landscape than the vampires and werewolves, but that makes them all the scarier when you find them lurking in the shadows.
“Sea Monsters” by Chloe Aridjis by Chloe Aridjis; introduction by Garth Greenwell
This Recommended Reading story is an excerpt from Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis, an adventurous and lyrical coming-of-age narrative about a teenage girl named Luisa, who’s run away with a boy she barely knows. She wants to track down a troupe of traveling dwarves who’ve escaped a Soviet circus while touring through Mexico. This surreal and strange novel will have you hooked from the very first page.
The True Story of the Real Lolita by Adrienne Celt
In an interview between authors Adrienne Celt and Sarah Weinman, they discuss Weinman’s book The Real Lolita, which details the true story of Sally Horner, the inspiration for Nabokov’s controversial Lolita. Weinman explains her interests in true crime and socio- and psychopathic tendencies. Why do people commit the monstrous crimes that they do? This fascinating and eye-opening conversation analyzes The Real Lolita, true crime, Nabokov, and the ways that real horrors can influence literature.
We Deserve More Black Stories with Happy Endings by Exodus Oktavia Brownlow
Written by Black Mississippian, Exodus Oktavia Brownlow, this essay calls for happy Black endings in the face of a country and culture deadset on representing only Black trauma. To love, embrace, and celebrate one’s own Blackness is an act of rebellion. To find joy, to win, and to make it to the end alive, as a Black person, is to turn away from the cliché narrative that tells us there is no alternative to losing.
11 of the Best Love Letters in Literature, Both Fictional and Not by Dani Spencer
These love letters range from steamy to heart-wrenching, but what ties them all together are the throes of passion and longing. As Dani Spencer notes, love letters carry with them a vulnerability that makes a reader, who the words are not meant for, feel somewhat of an intruder on a private intimacy. But what more beautiful consumption is there than that of the love between two strangers?
The Great Silence by Ted Chiang; introduction by Karen Joy Fowler
In this short story, Ted Chiang addresses the Fermi paradox, which understands that humans being the only intelligent species in the universe is nearly impossible, but, despite our technological advances, we have heard from the universe only silence. Chiang’s story asks why our focus is not on earth and the creatures here who are able to communicate in our language. Told from the perspective of an endangered Puerto Rican parrot, the story proposes a refocusing of resources and attention to our earthly creatures, before we listen to the forests and hear only silence here too.
Everything You Wanted to Know about Book Sales (But Were Afraid to Ask) by Lincoln Michel
An informative article on the business of publishing—the how and why to book sales and the basics to understanding the publishing industry. Why is it considered such a taboo conversation? Competition? Too many options? Too much math? This guide explains the ins and outs of the literary market in an accessible format. Keep this one bookmarked if you’re an author in need of a quick reference!
The Book That Made Me a Feminist Was Written by an Abuser by Jessica Jernigan
This personal narrative essay asks how we reckon with the media that shaped us turning out to be created by an abuser. For Jernigan, this book is The Mists of Avalon, a foundational novel for her feminism in the face of a patriarchal system and one that influenced her scholarly and personal interests in religion, folklore, and spirituality. But in 2014, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter reported that the author sexually abused her and other children. How, and should we, separate the art from the artist? How do we move forward from the creator’s betrayal while still holding on to what the art has done for us?
What I Don’t Tell My Students About “The Husband Stitch” by Jane Dykema
This essay about Carmen Maria Machado’s first story in her 2017 collection Her Body and Other Parties is not about the husband stitch, as the story’s title evokes, but “about believing and being believed.” Jane Dykema interrogates truth, [un]reliability, perception, and memory. She asks why women are so often not believed—a historically perpetuated skepticism—and what are the consequences of that disbelief?
Please Just Let Women Be Villains by Elyse Martin
This essay asks us why must we provide justification for the evil actions of our villainesses. In a culture where women are supposed to be our moral compasses and virtuous bodies, warm and ready to provide love and care, we simply cannot let them be evil. We must get their side of the story and context for their egregious behaviors. But are we actually stripping our villainesses of agency by tricking or manipulating them toward evil? Can we not just let our women be bad?
My Mom Doesn’t Recognize Me But Neither Do I by Wendy Wimmer; introduction by Kristen Arnett
This excerpt by Wendy Wimmer, from her 2022 collection Entry Level, follows Grace, who is caring for her aging mother who suffers from acute dementia. This story is an exploration of bodies—the frustrations with them, the ways they age, the ways they fail, the ways they take up space and then cease to. Funny and heartbreaking and smart, this is a story about tending to loss, grief, and the decade-long tensions of being a mother’s daughter.
In Where the Dead Sit Talking, a Native American Teen Searches for Home by Melissa Michal
In this interview about Indigenous identity, Melissa Michal talks with Brandon Hobson about his novel Where the Dead Sit Talking. The book follows a teenage Cherokee boy navigating the foster care system. The two Native writers discuss themes of displacement, of intergenerational trauma, the horrors of the foster care system, and the disconnect of cultural ancestry in the face of perceived necessary assimilation.
Why Are Men So Much Worse At Writing Sex Than Women? by Lisa Locascio Nighthawk
It’s a running joke in the literary world how historically bad cishet male authors are at writing women. But what about sex? Yep, they’re bad at writing that too. This essay explores the ways men have attempted to enter the erotic sphere and failed to create anything remotely intimate or sexy, and Nighthawk examines the deeper issues here. The lack of understanding of the female body, the aggressive language, the odd metaphors, as well as the overconfidence of the cishet man approaching sex scenes. Bad Sex Award goes to…?
7 Flash Fiction Stories That Are Worth (a Tiny Amount of) Your Time by Emmanuel Nataf
The key word here is brief. These seven flash fiction pieces are gut-punches—you’’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll remember them far beyond the mere minutes it’ll take you to read them. This list exemplifies the many facets of a flash piece, depicting this seemingly constrictive form as expansive as longer prose forms.
Librarians Are Secretly the Funniest People Alive by Jo Lou
Our most popular article of all time quashes the stereotype of uptight librarians. From riffing on Old Spice ads at a Mormon University to hosting literary costume dance parties, here are seven videos (plus a bonus SNL skit) that prove librarians are funnier than the rest of us.