Pittsburgh Review of Books

World Literature: Genre-Defying Writer Dimitris Lyacos (Greece) with Cellist Liam Battle - City of Asylum Dimitris Lyacos, a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, brings his trademark genre-defying flair to Alphabet City in this combination reading and musical collaboration celebrating his l...

The event is free, and available both in person and virtually. RSVP here: cityofasylum.org/program/worl...

We're pleased to host Dimitris Lyacos at Pittsburgh's @cityofasylum.bsky.social on March 10! pghrev.com/genre-defyin...

Is Queen Esther the First Conversa? - Pittsburgh Review of Books Growing up as a young Jewish girl in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I attended a small private Jewish elementary school. I was in the "big class" consisting of

“I loved Queen Esther: her glam, her grit, her mystery. I never thought of Queen Esther as a crypto-Jew, but that is exactly what she was (and the first one at that): a person who concealed her Jewish identity to survive in a hostile environment.” — Sarah Fleming Steinberg
pghrev.com/is-queen-est...

The False Allure of Rarity - Pittsburgh Review of Books If beauty and truth are art’s supreme duo, rarity is something like its third wheel. Rarity is distinct from scarcity, which carries a connotation of

From Shakespeare’s phoenix to Ovid’s clause, literary history reveals that rarity alone creates no value—only when paired with beauty and truth does art achieve lasting worth.

A. Natasha Joukovsky on the false allure of rarity. @melvillehouse.bsky.social
pghrev.com/the-false-al...

Rain - Pittsburgh Review of Books A friend and I stand on the balcony of our apartment building when the rain’s rhythm on our windows becomes impossible to ignore. Sometimes it catches us when

"A friend and I stand on the balcony of our apartment building when the rain’s rhythm on our windows becomes impossible to ignore." This week at Object Lessons Impressions, Claire Redick plays in the puddles. pghrev.com/rain/

In conversation with Managing Editor Shanzeh Afzal, Sunil Amrith talks about how environmental hope and environmental joy can come from decentralized climate action and community building. pghrev.com/sunil-amrith...

Can AI Read? - Pittsburgh Review of Books Can AI actually read? Sort of. The deed is part of a two-stage process. Say I want ChatGPT (or some other chatbot) to write a plot summary of Mary Shelley’s

“When AI reads and then writes, it conjures up results that are eerily akin to what human reading- plus-writing might come up with, at least in terms of compositional quality. Why does this matter?” An excerpt from Naomi S. Baron's READER BOT. @stanfordpress.bsky.social
pghrev.com/can-ai-read/

How De La Soul Changed Hip-Hop—and Why We Almost Forgot - Pittsburgh Review of Books Hip-hop and Generation X came of age together. As Gen Xers moved through their teenage years in the 1970s and '80s, hip-hop exploded from underground Bronx

Renèe Nicholson wrote a thoughtful and generous review of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age for Pittsburgh Review of Books

pghrev.com/how-de-la-so...

Reading for Black History Month - Pittsburgh Review of Books Christopher Schaberg, Columnist: Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler

The PRoB staff's recommend reading for Black History Month. pghrev.com/reading-for-...

Caliban’s Nipples - Pittsburgh Review of Books Boydell's Illustrations of the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (1797) is a collection of broadsheet engravings that collectively constitute one of the most

Caliban’s Nipples: an exploration of Fuseli’s Shakespeare illustrations reveals how race, desire, colonial anxiety, and personal obsession converge in eighteenth-century visual culture. By Stephen Wittek.
pghrev.com/calibans-nip...

Mule Boy - Pittsburgh Review of Books I could still see the boy of thirteen on that morning of the first day of the year 1929, and I could tell them, if they wanted me to, what his life was like

"Until he gets used to it, the dark, and then maybe I can see my way to finding him a job as a spragger, the man said and I didn’t like the way he said maybe..."

An excerpt from Andrew Krivak's MULE BOY, out now from Bellevue Literary Press.
pghrev.com/mule-boy/

What We're Reading the Fourth Week of February 2026 - Pittsburgh Review of Books A roundup of the most engaging recent pieces on the web read by the Pittsburgh Review of Books this week.

What We’re Reading the Fourth Week of February 2026: pieces from @hyperallergic.com @aeon.co @theguardian.com @lithub.com.web.brid.gy @smithsonianmag.bsky.social @salon.com @bostonreview.bsky.social @jacobinmag.bsky.social @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social and more!
pghrev.com/what-were-re...

Namwali Serpell on Toni Morrison - Pittsburgh Review of Books There is a particular kind of intimacy reserved for readers. An intimacy forged, not through handshakes or shared meals, but through sentences. In On

“The risk of monumentality is that it can transform a writer into a symbol. The prose becomes marble. ON MORRISON refuses the marble. Instead, Serpell returns to the sentences.”

Jordan Snowden reviews Namwali Serpell's ON MORRISON, out now from Hogarth. pghrev.com/namwali-serp...

What Happens When We Can’t Walk in the City? - Pittsburgh Review of Books As I paced around my tiny apartment, holding my phone to my ear (my favorite way to get my daily steps in), my dad recounted to me the recent goings-on in our

What happens when we can’t walk in the city? Using Michel de Certeau as a guide in occupied Minneapolis. By Sofia Johnson.

pghrev.com/what-happens...

A Writer Talks to His Translator - Pittsburgh Review of Books I read a lot of books in Spanish and Portuguese for my work as a freelance literary translator, and it’s very rare for me to read a novel and like it so much

My conversation with the great @vicenteluismora.bsky.social is up on @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social! We talk about the challenges of translating experimental literature, spanish golden age poetry and the difference between archaeological and historical novels; pghrev.com/a-writer-tal...

A Writer Talks to His Translator - Pittsburgh Review of Books I read a lot of books in Spanish and Portuguese for my work as a freelance literary translator, and it’s very rare for me to read a novel and like it so much

Spanish novelist Vincente Luis Mora talks to his translator Rahul Bery about experimentation, Medieval and Renaissance poetry, and the strange allure of setting a fiction in nineteenth-century Prussia.
pghrev.com/a-writer-tal...

“Where a lesser essayist might go on to ruminate about mortality and burial rites, LeMay’s focus stays with the stand of trees awhile, a spot that ‘looks very much alive.'” @rebeccamoonruark.bsky.social on the work of Eric LeMay.

pghrev.com/finding-love...

Adolph Reed Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren in Conversation - Pittsburgh Review of Books Samuele F.S. Pardini interviews Adolph Reed Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren about their new book "Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality:

"This book is really the latest manifestation of a long-term conversation that we have been having ever since we met in the 1980s."

Adolph Reed Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren in conversation, with Samuele F.S. Pardini. pghrev.com/adolph-reed-...

“Now, Reed Jr. and Warren have taken their collaboration a step further as they co-wrote a new book of essays about the state of Black Studies and the cultural politics that attends to it.”

Read "Black Studies/Cultural Politics" by Samuele F. S. Pardini,

pghrev.com/black-studie...

How De La Soul Changed Hip-Hop—and Why We Almost Forgot - Pittsburgh Review of Books Hip-hop and Generation X came of age together. As Gen Xers moved through their teenage years in the 1970s and '80s, hip-hop exploded from underground Bronx

"De la Soul’s absence on streaming platforms prevented younger listeners from seeing historical connections between their music and that of contemporaries."

Austin McCoy’s LIVING IN A D.A.I.S.Y. AGE traces De La Soul’s fight for artistic ownership. By Renée K. Nicholson. pghrev.com/how-de-la-so...

Sister Maria Teresa Garzi's Confession - Pittsburgh Review of Books Although many historical trials involved male defendants, as we can see in the cases of female enclosures in eighteenth-century Italy, women were also

"Her case, among others, gives insight into how we might explore women’s reading strategies in early modern Italy."

An excerpt from WHAT GOD KEPT FOR HIMSELF: ATHEISM, SODOMY, AND RADICAL DISSENT IN RENAISSANCE ITALY by Umberto Grassi, out from @harvardpress.bsky.social. pghrev.com/sister-maria...

Tub - Pittsburgh Review of Books We clock each other out. The guy showing me around the apartment is distracted by his own spiel about the advantage of utilities not being included, and so

"Tub and me. Twelve years and counting. My most successful relationship to date." In this week's Object Lessons Impressions, James Currie takes a bath. pghrev.com/tub/

"I don’t know if in painting I succeed or fail."

A poem from the foundational Spanish modernist Jorge Guillén.

From the new anthology, A COMPASS ON THE NAVIGABLE SEA: 100 YEARS OF WORLD LITERATURE. pghrev.com/at-the-edge-...

Our Managing Editor Shanzeh Afzal asks, “If climate action requires more extraction, do the ends justify the means?” pghrev.com/the-extracti...

What We’re Reading the Third Week of February 2026 - Pittsburgh Review of Books A roundup of what the Pittsburgh Review of Book’s class is reading the third week of February 2026:

What we're reading this week: pieces from @bostonreview.bsky.social @npr.org @jstordaily.bsky.social @jacobinmag.bsky.social @parterrebox.bsky.social @electricliterature.com @motherjones.com @newrepublic.com @hyperallergic.com @laphamsquarterly.bsky.social and more! pghrev.com/what-were-re...

A Poet's Warning about the Climate Emergency - Pittsburgh Review of Books In August 1791, in a wooded clearing in northern Saint-Domingue, enslaved Africans gathered beneath heavy skies. The ceremony at Bois Caïman, part ritual and

On the occasion of the release of his poetry collection KONBIT, out now from CMU Press, Aakanksha Agarwal interviews Pittsburgh writer Sony Ton-Amie. pghrev.com/a-poets-warn...

August Wilson's American Century - Pittsburgh Review of Books Laurence Glasco, in his new book August Wilson's American Century: Life as Art, claims August Wilson has four distinct identities: outsider, warrior, race

"Wilson sensed that creativity is all around us, and Glasco sees that."

Thanks to the @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social for this wonderful, thoughtful review of August Wilson's American Century!

pghrev.com/august-wilso...

August Wilson's American Century - Pittsburgh Review of Books Laurence Glasco, in his new book August Wilson's American Century: Life as Art, claims August Wilson has four distinct identities: outsider, warrior, race

"These plays 'gave dignity and respect to the lives of Pittsburgh’s working-class Black residents that [Wilson] carefully observed and came to value.'”

Doug MacLeod reviews Laurence Glasco’s AUGUST WILSON'S AMERICAN CENTURY: LIFE AS ART. pghrev.com/august-wilso...

Is a Novel Alive? - Pittsburgh Review of Books Robert Macfarlane’s elegiac Is a River Alive? arrived last year and quickly claimed its place among the most evocative nature writing of recent memory. In

“The ways which we would say a great novel is alive are myriad: its characters strike us not as imagined but as real...humans; its settings are painted so well as to have personalities; its many meanings and interpretations change when humans and cultures change, too.” pghrev.com/is-a-novel-a...

From banned Soviet novel to global blockbuster, Zhivago reveals the politics of adaptation. By Andreea Deciu Ritivoi.

pghrev.com/adapting-dr-...