Contemporary Literature

08/05/2025

How does autofiction contend with technologically mediated ways of seeing and projecting the self? In our read of the week, Marek Makowski produces “A New Exercise in Looking”: Experiments in Autofiction and the Novels of Olga Tokarczuk. Read it here: http://cl.uwpress.org/content/current

08/04/2025

How do modern managerialism, short-termism, and the information economy shape narrative resistance to work and capital?

Huw Marsh offers a salient analysis in our read of the week: "'Bu****it' Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Novel."

cl.uwpress.org/content/current

25/03/2025

Issue 65.2 highlight: Siobhan Phillips takes on culinary labor and the cookbook in Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's "Vibration Cooking." 🍳Read it here: http://cl.uwpress.org/content/current

25/03/2025

Contemporary Literature issue 65.2 is hot off the press, featuring exciting new work on autofiction, workplace novels, food writing, and more!

Contributors include Marek Makowski, Huw Marsh, Kristi Maxwell, Siobhan Phillips, and Daniel Weston. 🗞️

Read it here:

04/03/2025

Call For Papers:

CL seeks scholarly essays on post–World War II literature written in English which offer scope, supply a new dimension to conventional approaches, or transform customary ways of leading writers.

Recent articles include:
• “Of Indeterminate Blackness”: The DJ Aesthetics of Paul Beatty’s Slumberland
• Aminatta Forna’s Postcolonial Romance: Borders, Foxes, and Natural Resilience in Happiness
• The Love Elegy and the Land Question: On June Jordan’s Radical Occasions

Interviews:
CL welcomes interviews that focus on an author’s writing, pursue and elaborate a line of questioning and response, and provide insight into central aspects of the writer’s significance.

Past interviews have featured writers such as: Dorothy Allison, Rae Armantrout, Edwidge Danticat, Yaa Gyasi, Brenda Hillman, Rachael Kushner, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Charles Yu

27/01/2025

Issue 65.1 highlight 🤖 Michael Gavin collaborates with ChatGPT to write "Literary Theory in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," a review of Dennis Yi Tenen's *Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write* (2024).

Click here for more:

27/01/2025

Issue 65.1 highlight 📍Chijioke K. Onah interviews Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, "arguably the most critical intellectual voice from the continent writing about Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria." For more on their conversation about activism, journalism, and the novel, click here:

27/01/2025

📍Contemporary Literature issue 65.1 is now available, featuring exciting new work from Chijioke K. Onah, Paul Dawson, Ryan Hibbett, Sam Weselowski, Michael Gavin, and Daniel Ryan Morse.

Read it here:

16/10/2024

📍Contemporary Literature issue 64.4 is now available, featuring exciting new work from Hannah Loeb, Daria Goncharova, Jens Elze, Michael Dowdy, Timothy Yu, Brian Croxall, and McKinsey Kemeny!

Read it here:

Contemporary Literature publishes scholarly essays on contemporary writing in English, interviews with established and emerging authors, and reviews of recent critical books in the field. The journal welcomes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new ...

06/08/2024

In issue 64.3 we also have the pleasure of announcing the winner of Contemporary Literature's 2024 Dembo Prize, Tobias Huttner, for his extraordinary article, ""The Love Elegy and the Land Question: On June Jordan's Radical Occasions." Honorable mentions go to Kelly Roberts for her outstanding essay, "“Dennis Cooper’s Closer and Its Social Discontents,” and to Erin Greer, for her insightful article, “‘The Lyric Gift’: Political and Literary Judgment in Ian McEwan’s Saturday.” Congratulations to each!

06/08/2024

Contemporary Literature issue 64.3 is now live, featuring exciting work by Philip Derbesy, Ryan Ku, Cameron Leader-Picone, Laura Savu Walker, and Jessica Swoboda! Read here:

Contemporary Literature publishes scholarly essays on contemporary writing in English, interviews with established and emerging authors, and reviews of recent critical books in the field. The journal welcomes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new ...

07/05/2024

Contemporary Literature issue 64.2 is now live! This issue features incisive essays by Stephanie Burt, Henry Ivry, Julia C. Obert, Joshua Pederson, and Molly Slavin. Read here:

Contemporary Literature publishes scholarly essays on contemporary writing in English, interviews with established and emerging authors, and reviews of recent critical books in the field. The journal welcomes articles on multiple genres, including poetry, the novel, drama, creative nonfiction, new ...