Freeman's

Following his acclaimed debut issue of collected writing on the theme of "Arrival," the renowned editor and critic John Freeman circles a topic of constantly shifting definitions and endless fascination for writers: family. In an essay called "Crossroads," Aminatta Forna muses on the legacy of slavery as she settles her family in Washington, DC-a place where she is routinely accused of cutting in line when she stands next to her white husband. Award-winning novelist Claire Vaye Watkins delivers a stunning portrait of a woman in the throes of postpartum depression. Booker Prize winner Marlon James takes the focus off absent fathers to write about his mother, who calls to sing him happy birthday every year. Novelist Claire Messud's writes of the two four-legged tyrants in her home; Sandra Cisneros muses about her extended family of past lovers; and Aleksandar Hemon tells the story of his uncle's desperate attempt to remain a communist despite decades in the Soviet gulag. With outstanding, never-before-published pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from literary heavyweights and up-and-coming writers alike, Freeman's: Family collects the most amusing, heartbreaking, and probing stories about family life emerging today.

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The literary anthology Freeman's, created by writer, critic, and former Granta editor John Freeman, has quickly gained an international following with wide acclaim. It has been called "bold [and] searching" by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and "impressively diverse" by O Magazine. This issue introduces a list of more than twenty-five poets, essayists, novelists, and short story writers from around the world who are shaping contemporary literature and will continue to impact it in years to come. Drawing on recommendations from book editors, critics, translators, and authors from across the globe, Freeman's: The Future of New Writing includes pieces from writers aged twenty-five to seventy, from almost twenty countries and writing in almost as many languages. This will be a new kind of list, and an aesthetic manifesto for our times. Against a climate of nationalism and siloed thinking, this special issue celebrates a global view of where writing is going next.

Spouse to spouse, soldier to citizen, looker to gazed upon, power is never static: it is either demonstrated or deployed. This thought-provoking issue of the acclaimed literary anthology Freeman's explores who gets to say what matters in a time of social upheaval. Margaret Atwood posits it is time to update the gender of werewolf narratives. Aminatta Forna shatters the silences which supposedly ensured her safety as a woman of color walking in public spaces. The narrator of Lan Samantha Chang's short story finally wrenches control of the family's finances from her husband only to make a fatal mistake. Meanwhile the hero of Tahmima Anam's story achieves freedom by selling bull semen. Booker Prize winner Ben Okri watches power stripped from the residents of Grenfell Tower by ferocious neglect. Meanwhile, Barry Lopez remembers fourteen glimpses of power, from the moment he hitched a ride on a cargo plane in Korea to the glare he received from a bear traveling with her cubs in the woods, asking-do you intend me harm? Featuring work from brand new writers Nicole I’m, Jaime Cortez, and Nimmi Gowrinathan, as well as from some of the world's best storytellers, including US poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, Franco-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, and Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, Freeman's: Power escapes from the headlines of today and burrows into the heart of the issue.

"A necessary piece in a literary California collection" with new work from Tommy Orange, Rabih Alamdeddine, Mai Der Vang, Jennifer Egan, and others (Los Angeles Times). From immigration rights to climate change, California has been ground zero for the most crucial questions of our time. In a bravura essay, Rabih Alamdeddine remembers bartending during the worst years of the AIDS crisis. William T. Vollmann visits the Carr fire and discovers that gas masks are the new normal. Natalie Diaz describes growing up in the desert and remaking her body on the basketball court. Award-winning journalist Lauren Markham revisits her family's tales of their arrival in a town built by a con man on stolen land. Karen Tei Yamashita tells of a Japanese-American man going to Hiroshima after the bomb dropped, writing letters home. Reyna Grande witnesses her mother never adapting after migrating from Mexico. Tommy Orange conjures a native man so lost and broke he's either going to rob a bank or end his life-but love might rescue him. Rachel Kushner sings a hymn to the danger and beauty of cars. And since the Beat movement, California has also given birth to an explosion of poetry. New poems by Frank Bidart, Robin Coste Lewis, D.A. Powell, and recent poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera join newcomers Mai Der Vang and Javier Zamora in this investigation and celebration of California writing. Featuring new work from Héctor Tobar and Jennifer Egan, Oscar Villalon and Anthony Marra, Geoff Dyer and Elaine Castillo, Freeman's: California will become a benchmark for California anthologies before and to come. "In this collection, California in all its glorious complexity comes vividly to life." -Kirkus Reviews

New work from Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and others propels this tribute to love from Freeman's, "a powerful force in the literary world" (Los Angeles Times). In a time of contentiousness and flagrant abuse, it often feels as if our world is run on hate. Invective. Cruelty and sadism. But is it possible the greatest and most powerful force is love? In the newest issue of this acclaimed series, Freeman's: Love asks this question, bringing together literary heavyweights like Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk alongside emerging writers such as Gunnhild Øyehaug and Semezdin Mehmedinovic. Mehmedinovic contributes a breathtaking book-length essay on the aftermath of his wife's stroke, describing how the two reassembled their lives outside their home country of Bosnia. Richard Russo's charming and painful "Good People" introduces us to two sets of married professors who have been together for decades, and for whom love still exists, but between the wrong pair. Haruki Murakami tells the tale of a one-night stand that feels like a dying sun. Together, the pieces comprise a stunning exploration of the complexities of love, tracing it from its earliest stirrings, to the forbidden places where it emerges against reason, to loss so deep it changes the color of perception. In a time when we need it the most, this issue promises what only love can bring: a solace of complexity and warmth. "The anthology packs an emotional wallop from the start." -Shelf Awareness

This volume of the acclaimed literary journal explores the hope and pain of an ever-changing present with new work by Lauren Groff, Ocean Vuong, and more. The Covid-19 pandemic forced many of us to reimagine our homes, work, and relationships. And yet, in this period of intense isolation, we faced dilemmas which are nearly universal. How to love, to care for aging parents, to fight for justice. This vast range of experiences is captured by our greatest storytellers, essayists, and poets, in this issue of Freeman's: Change. In Joshua Bennett's essay, a Coltrane playlist sets the stage for early morning dances with his newborn son as they watch the sun come up. In Lina Mounzer's "The Gamble," a father's incessant hope for a better life festers and sinks the whole family after they leave Lebanon during the Civil War. In Kamel Daoud's heartbreaking tale, a widow's attempt to retreat into the unchanging past edits her son right from her reality. And in "Final Days," Sayaka Murata imagines a future without aging, where people must choose how and when they want to die. With new writing from Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Zahia Rahmani, Yoko Ogawa, Yasmine El Rashidi, Lina Meruane, and Aleksandar Hemon, and featuring work from never-before-published writers like Elizabeth Ayre, Freeman's: Change opens a window into the many-sided ways we adapt.

Featuring new work from Mieko Kawakami, Martín Espada, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Arthur Sze, Camonghne Felix, and more, the latest installment of the acclaimed literary journal Freeman's explores the irrevocably intertwined lives of animals and the humans that exist alongside themOver a century ago, Rilke went to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where he watched a pair of flamingos. A flock of other birds screeched by, and, as he describes in a poem, the great red-pink birds sauntered on, unphased, then "stretched amazed and singly march into the imaginary." This encounter-so strange, so typical of flamingos, with their fabulous posture-is also still typical of how we interact with animals. Even as our actions threaten their very survival, they are still symbolic, captivating and captive, caught in a drama of our framing This issue of Freeman's tells the story of that interaction, its costs, its tendernesses, the mythological flex of it. From lovers in a Chiara Barzini story, falling apart as a group of wild boars roams in their Roman neighborhood, to the soppen emergency birth of a cow on a Wales farm, stunningly described by Cynan Jones, no one has the moral high ground here. Nor is this a piece of mourning. There's wonder, humor, rage, and relief, too.Featuring pigeons, calves, stray dogs, mascots, stolen cats, and bears, to the captive, tortured animals who make up our food supply, powerfully described in Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk's essay, this wide-ranging issue of Freeman's will stimulate discussion and dreams alike.