Freeman’s: California

John Freeman is the editor of Freeman's, a literary annual of new writing, and executive editor of the Literary Hub. His books include How to Read a Novelist and The Tyranny of E-mail, as well as Tales of Two Americas, an anthology of new writing about inequality in the U.S. today. Maps, his debut collection of poems, was published in 2017. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he is Writer in Residence at New York University. For John Freeman―literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)―it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing. From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen. With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven. She is the author of the short story collection An Unrestored Woman. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2015. Poornima and Savitha, the main characters in Shobha Rao´s debut novel Girls Burn Brighter (Flatiron Books), have three strikes against them: they are poor, they are ambitious, and they are girls. After her mother’s death, Poornima is left to care for her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. Then Savitha enters their household, and Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly, Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond arranged marriage. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend. What follows is a journey into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Regardless the obstacles, these two friends never lose the hope that burns within. The New York Times Book Review called it “Engrossing…The pages keep turning, the language is lyrical and lovely, and many phrases call for pause and appreciation…Rao is a capable and confident writer, able to handle a vast and ambitious story line.”

Born in Heilongjiang, China, Wang Xuan moved to Los Angeles when she was seven. She chose the name “Juliana” out of the back of a dictionary. Wang Juliana Xuan is a fiction editor at Fence and her stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Cut, Gulfcoast, The Brooklyn Rail and The Pushcart Prize and The Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies. She teaches creative writing at UCLA. In Home Remedies (Hogarth), her first collection of short stories, Juliana Wang introduces us to the new and changing face of Chinese youth. From fuerdai (second-generation rich kids) to a glass-swallowing qigong grandmaster, her dazzling, formally inventive stories upend the immigrant narrative to reveal a new experience of belonging: of young people testing the limits of who they are, in a world as vast and varied as their ambitions. Her stories of love, family, and friendship capture the voices, faces and experiences of a new generation. In her review for the New York Times, May-Lan Tan noted that in Wang’s stories “every good thing comes at a price. Each character gets something he or she wants, but only by sacrificing something he or she needs.” The Financial Times said that Home Remedies “announce the arrival of an exciting, electric new voice.”