Author Description

In celebration of Conjunctions' 40th issue, the journal has gathered together fiction, poetry, plays and creative essays by some of its favorite contemporary writers. Featuring novels in progress from authors including Richard Powers, Howard Norman, Paul Auster and Lois-Ann Yamanaka, as well as "Heli," a surreal novella by China's foremost fiction writer, Can Xue, in which a boy falls in love with a girl who lives entrapped in a glass cabinet from which he must free her. Short fiction by writers such as Rikki Ducornet, William T. Vollmann, William H. Gass and Diane Williams appears, in addition to "Condition," a harrowing story by Christopher Sorrentino, based on historical events from the 1970s, charting the psychological disintegration of a female newscaster who, on her last day alive, methodically plots her suicide on live TV. 40x40 also features creative nonfiction by David Shields and Eliot Weinberger, poetry by Cole Swensen, Martine Bellen, John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian and Robert Creeley, and a visual poem by Tan Lin. Rounding out this diverse celebration of contemporary work is a previously unpublished play by Joyce Carol Oates, specially commissioned for this anniversary issue, and a lively full-color portfolio of new work by Russian emigre artist Ilya Kabakov.