Lori Ellison and the Death of a Comrade

Philadelphia, 1995: Shannon’s walking me through a maze of bright white art studios. Soon faces appear and voices erupt: New friends greeting each other. Introductions are made. Lori is tallest, and her voice distinguishes itself from the others. From the moment I heard her speak, Lori Ellison’s characteristic contradictions were immediately legible in her voice. I noticed first what wasn’t there: Almost every other artist or peer I met in the ‘90s talked with a layer of self-protection, whether it […]

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Karen Lillis’s “Watch the Doors as They Close” Enters The Canon Of Love

Watch the Doors As They Close by Karen Lillis Spuyten Duyvil; 100 p. Like many contemporary readers, I feel oddly ambivalent about today’s literary love stories, or lack thereof.  I cannot think of a relationship from the world of literature that inspires me or engenders jealousy. (Two exceptions: Calvin Trillin’s nonfiction account of his wife in the devastating About Alice, and of course, that cool couple from The Notebook.) We live with a lacunae in the literary world in our […]

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