On the cover: Constance Debré, West Hollywood, 2022. Photo: © Monica Nouwens 2022.

The spring issue of Bookforum is online now!

The Editors
Constance Debré, 2021. Adam Peter Johnson © Flammarion.

Absence Makes the Heart

Constance Debré’s novels of transformation
Christine Smallwood

Holding Court

Hanif Abdurraqib writes a letter of love and loss to basketball and his home state
Gene Seymour

Star Struck

Lauren Oyler’s meditations on Goodreads, anxiety, and gossip
Ann Manov
Illustration from Woman’s Day Magazine (February 1957).

Wife Sentences

Lisa Selin Davis’s confused history of homemakers
Moira Donegan
paper trail
Annie Finch. Photo: Penguin Random House © Helen Peppe
Writers discuss abortion at Brooklyn Public Library event; leaked New York Times memo on Gaza coverage
culture
Self-portrait by Nicholson Baker.
Nicholson Baker learns to draw
Lisa Borst
fiction
Anna Biller, The Love Witch, 2016, 35 mm, color, sound, 120 minutes. Elaine (Samantha Robinson). Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Anna Biller’s over-the-top rendition of the Bluebeard fairy tale
Sarah Chihaya
fiction
Graffiti in the Queen’s Quarter, Belfast, Ireland, 2013. William Murphy/Flickr.
Rachel Connolly’s novel of trauma and lassitude in Belfast
Celeste Marcus
culture
Ed Auerlich-Sugai, I Want My Life Back, 1991, diptych, mixed media on paper, 44 1/4 × 22 1/4". Courtesy of the Ed Auerlich-Sugai Collection and Archive.
A memoir of AIDS, loss, and abundance
Kay Gabriel
culture
Image: Wikicommons.
Sheila Heti’s soft imperatives
Catherine Lacey
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