Contemporary Literature

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Contemporary Literature Contemporary Literature is the academic journal of record for criticism about post-1945 Anglophone literature. Coetzee to American readers.

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 media and digital literature, and graphic narrative. CL published the first articles on Thomas Pyncho

n and Susan Howe and the first interviews with Margaret Drabble and Don DeLillo; it also helped to introduce Kazuo Ishiguro, Eavan Boland, and J.M. As a forum for discussing issues animating the range of contemporary literary studies, CL features the full diversity of critical practices. The editors seek articles that frame their analysis of texts within larger literary historical, theoretical or cultural debates.

How does digital celebrity shape the self-consciousness of contemporary autofiction? Hannah A. Jorgensen answers in "Aut...
21/08/2025

How does digital celebrity shape the self-consciousness of contemporary autofiction? Hannah A. Jorgensen answers in "Authentic Flesh, Digital Bits," featured in CL 65.4. Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/65/4/514

21/08/2025

Contemporary Literature issue 65.4 is out now, featuring new work by Brooke Conti, Katy Dadacz, Kristin Emanuel, Hannah A. Jorgensen, and Weishun Lu. Read it here: http://cl.uwpress.org/content/current.

We are thrilled to announce that Jessica Swoboda has been awarded the 2025 L.S. Dembo prize for her wonderful article, "...
17/06/2025

We are thrilled to announce that Jessica Swoboda has been awarded the 2025 L.S. Dembo prize for her wonderful article, "Rachel Cusk's Attention Ecology."

In 64.3, Swoboda suggests that we might respond to the demands of an attention economy by modeling and attending to "attention ecologies," environments "that heighten alertness to the networks...among which humans exist, perceive, and interrelate." To read Swoboda's narratological treatment of attention economies/ecologies, click here: https://cl.uwpress.org/content/64/3/373

Honorable mention also goes to Georgina Colby and Michael Dowdy.

To read their stunning essays, published in 64.1 and 64.4 respectively, follow the links below.

"Housing the Stranger: Feminist Sheltering in the Work of Bhanu Kapil" https://cl.uwpress.org/content/64/1/24

"'Mexican or Something': Reading the Novels of Mexicanesque Appalachia" https://cl.uwpress.org/content/64/4/440

Corinna Norrick-Rühl and Alexander Starre go "book-clubbing" in their new article: "Genre, Diversity, and Metanarrativ...
10/06/2025

Corinna Norrick-Rühl and Alexander Starre go "book-clubbing" in their new article: "Genre, Diversity, and Metanarrative in Reese's Book Club"
https://cl.uwpress.org/content/current

A new wave of Chinese science fiction "depict[s] waste, not ordered progress, as the substance of China’s contemporary r...
10/06/2025

A new wave of Chinese science fiction "depict[s] waste, not ordered progress, as the substance of China’s contemporary reality and the genre’s primary concern." In issue 65.3, Martha Swift examines the underside of science fiction's high-tech futures. cl.uwpress.org/content/current

Contemporary Literature issue 65.3 is out now, featuring new work by Charlie Ericson, Sam Ladkin, Corinna Norrick-Rühl, ...
10/06/2025

Contemporary Literature issue 65.3 is out now, featuring new work by Charlie Ericson, Sam Ladkin, Corinna Norrick-Rühl, Alexander Starre, Matt Prout, and Martha Swift! Read it here:

09/06/2025

CL 65.3 is shaping up to be an exciting issue...stay tuned for its release later this week 📚🔜

How does autofiction contend with technologically mediated ways of seeing and projecting the self? In our read of the we...
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

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

Issue 65.2 highlight: Siobhan Phillips takes on culinary labor and the cookbook in Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's "Vibration...
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

Contemporary Literature issue 65.2 is hot off the press, featuring exciting new work on autofiction, workplace novels, f...
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

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