September 20
A newsletter from our publisher.
September 22
While reading through Kurt Vonnegut’s papers in the Lilly Library, at Indiana University, as they worked on the first comprehensive edition of his short fiction, Vonnegut’s friend Dan Wakefield and Jerome Klinkowitz, a scholar of Vonnegut’s work, came across five previously unpublished stories.
In anticipation of publishing Kurt Vonnegut’s Complete Stories (available for order today!), we’ve been rolling out some of those tales that never found their way into print. The Atlantic got “The Drone King,” which they published along with an incredible animated version of the story. Another, “Requiem for Zeitgeist” will be published tomorrow on the website of The Nation.
And here’s "And on Your Left," a never before published Vonnegut story exclusively for the Seven Stories blog. It tells the tale of hard scientists forced into a life of show biz, and how they conspire to get back to their work. We hope you enjoy!
November 30
If the Cultural Purity Police (CPP) had their way, they would brand British curry as theft, but every cuisine consists of an infinite number of borrowings and travels, sometimes stretching back millennia. . . . The idea of cultural purity now determines what representations we might safely consume without guilt. . . . [T]he loss is ours, doomed as we are to sterile images that question and probe nothing, offering only vast oceans of purity . . . .
March 15
Happy Birthday, Kate Bornstein! A celebrated pioneer and advocate for the LGBTQ community, Kate Bornstein is the author of My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely; Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us; and A Queer and Pleasant Danger: A Memoir. We've excerpted the introduction and first chapter of the inspiring Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws below. We hope you enjoy!
May 04
How is it that a man who is in the game only for himself can make a nation believethat he is in it for them? And is the left becoming more like Trump even as it fights to oppose him? Noah Kumin wonders about the reciprocal relationship between the President, his internet boosters, and his internet critics.
October 11
In recent weeks, we've seen two amazing documentaries I want you all to know about.
July 17
"But the bohemian narrative needed tweaking, as the old East Village went on dying. So I fudged together a grandiose tale of survival. I was the Last of the Mohicans, I told myself (“aha!”), citing the opening on Avenue A of the gourmet delicatessen Gracefully in 1999 as proof that our values were under attack by capitalism. I, descendant of Richard Hell, was to hold a valiant last stand before the neighborhood surrendered its anarcho-populism to commercial hegemony. Then, having decided my time was up, I would flee to the Upper East Side (I did just that), now the token artist moonlighting as an ironic has-been, raconteur to starchy lawyers and doctors. I would tell myself and everyone else that I’d been part of something real, something raw, something so unlike the preppy invasion, something no algorithm could ever predict, something unannounced."
Carlos Dengler writes about gentrification, social conscience, and more.
May 28
To celebrate Miles Davis's birthday this past Sunday, we're sharing an intimate conversation between Quincy Troupe, Miles's friend, biographer, and author of Miles and Me, and Seven Stories Publisher Dan Simon. Troupe dishes on the curious start to their friendship, the riotous energy of Miles's persona, and the deeply universal nature of his music. Our Spotify playlist at the end lets you groove to the rhythm of Troupe's favorite Davis tracks.
September 27
A newsletter from our publisher.
