Language Arts

It’s hard to capture a scene. For some people, it’s harder not to. In her memoir, writer, musician and visual artist Lauren Napier takes on the Warped Tour era of 2004-2008. You didn’t have to be there; it’s not a navel-gazing nostalgia trap; more movingly, it explores what happens when your identity is forged inside of something as fleeting as a scene.

“I was still so new,” Julie Buntin writes in Famous Men, a provocative, stylish, and thorny novel that considers and complicates the male gaze, internalized misogyny, and monstrous artists. “I hadn’t learned yet that many men, famous men, men Nathaniel’s age, men who have been at the head of the table for a long, long time—well.

It’s 2014 and Agnes, a beautiful nepo baby fashion obsessee, is looking for someone to kill her before her next Soul Cycle class. They say a reader should know what a protagonist wants in a story. In the case of “Agnes Lives!” what Agnes wants is the story: She wants someone to kill her. It’s simple enough but proves exceedingly difficult.

Is Elliott Smith on brand for Language Arts? Not no…but what you have to understand is that Elliott Smith is my hometown hero, that I’ve listened to “Needle in the Hay” (and the Vanessa Carlton cover) thousands of times, that every time he sings, “falling out/ 6th and Powell” I think about driving past the strip club on my way to elementary school and feel a pang of longing for an arterial cluttered with needles, both hypodermic and pine.

“I think you’d really like her novella,” my mentor told me over Zoom in 2022. The “her” in question? The singular wordsmith Nicola Maye Goldberg. Since that fateful Zoom call, I have read her work relentlessly, from her haunting novel Nothing Can Hurt Youto her shorter works in anthologies for presses Car Crash Collective and Rose Books. I even attempted to acquire her first poetry collection The Doll Factory but it never arrived in the mail.

If you read Nylon.com between the years of 2023 and 2024 or you’ve ever read Language Arts, you know the release of Ryan Murphy’s “The Shards” is basically a national holiday for us. Layla and I have never recommended a single book more. “The Shards” is our favorite gay panic book; our favorite 600-page book and even our favorite Bret Easton Ellis book.

“Rediscovery doesn’t happen by accident,” Gebremedhin tells me over the phone last month. “Books return to public life because people fight for them.” I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help books out: Seeing if I can include them in a list, pitching reviews and author interviews, telling my friends the books they absolutely have to read. Often, it feels like the shot clock is running out (I watched 2 Knicks games) and then it’s time to start pitching whatever’s coming out next.

Along with being the award-winning author of Talking to the Wolf, Rebecca Chace is a fan of books that chronicle the beautiful, devastating, and unforgettable complexities of female friendship. She shared her favorites with Language Arts, which you can read below. Subscribe to Language Arts :) Some people are surprised that there are almost no male characters in my novel. Really? I thought the myth that women spend most of their time talking about men had died the painful death it deserves.

Last month, we celebrated the New York release of Anna Dorn’s latest novel American Spirits. It was a fabulous evening and we extend our most sincere condolences to those who couldn’t attend. Due to popular demand, we’re sharing one of the pieces from the reading: Layla’s fanfiction about the other woman of the hour beside Anna, Lana Del Rey. Subscribe to Language Arts :) The matcha-flavored Flume vape loved the way it felt at the bottom of Lana Del Rey’s purse.

Pride month can be a permanent state of mind — or a book on your reading list. From tender and heartbreaking to transgressive and perverted, Language Arts’ curation of queer novels, essays, memoirs, and more has you covered. Subscribe to Language Arts <3 Sex, drugs, and the underground Parisian techno scene. A must-read if you want messy lesbians reckoning with careers, affairs, and more.