contemporary fiction

Current Issue Issue 10.2

“Something as definitionally useless as art”: Contemporary Women Writers’ Künstlerromane and the Possibility of a Beautiful World

The Künstlerroman has seen a resurgence of interest among millennial women writers. Describing novels in which the main character progresses toward the creation of art, the Künstlerroman is the perfect vehicle for metafictional interest in creative production—for instance, in the question of whether the novel can at once be imbricated within the market system and level meaningful aesthetic critique against it.

Issue 7.1 - Alluvium Relaunch Previous Issues

Alluvium Editorial 7.1: Relaunch

Zoe Bulaitis March 4, 2019 No Comments Alluvium BACLS c21 Caroline Wintersgill Chloe Ashbridge conference contemporary contemporary culture contemporary fiction definitions editorial future global relaunch twenty-first-century literature What Happens Now writing Zoe Bulaitis

We are delighted to be presenting you with the first new issue of Alluvium, which is relaunching as a graduate-run journal affiliated to the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS).

Issue 7.1 - Alluvium Relaunch Previous Issues

Digital Media and the Global Contemporary

Sarah Kirpekar-Sauer March 4, 2019 No Comments advocacy arts contemporary contemporary culture contemporary fiction definitions digital culture digital humanities global glocal glocalisation local localisation Refugee relaunch twenty-first-century literature

Broadly speaking, the early twenty-first century is both increasingly global, and increasingly shaped by digital technology.

Issue 7.1 - Alluvium Relaunch Previous Issues

Mapping the Contemporary

Caroline Wintersgill March 4, 2019 No Comments BACLS book publication contemporary contemporary culture contemporary fiction definitions edited collection global interview launch relaunch twenty-first-century literature

An Interview with Daniel O’Gorman and Robert Eaglestone on publishing The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction.

Issue 7.1 - Alluvium Relaunch Previous Issues

Identifying with Our Contemporaries

Richard Bingham March 4, 2019 No Comments contemporary contemporary culture contemporary fiction definitions Generation X generations global Ireland Irish fiction media Millennials relaunch Teenage twenty-first-century literature

If the hype is to be believed, “millennials” have finally found their literary standard-bearer in Irish author Sally Rooney [ …]

Issue 7.1 - Alluvium Relaunch Previous Issues

Contemporary Canonicity (or, what not to read)

Rachel Sykes March 4, 2019 No Comments American literature Amy Hungerford canon contemporary contemporary culture contemporary fiction definitions relaunch syllabi twenty-first-century literature what not to read

Scholarship on the contemporary has a unique relationship to questions of canonicity and value. […]

Issue 4.2 Previous Issues

Editorial – Global Conflict

Daniel O' Gorman May 13, 2015 No Comments Amnesty International Baudrillard Child soldier civilians contemporary fiction contemporary literature Dave Eggers dissociation drone Edward Said George Brant global conflict Goretti Kyomuhendo IDP imprisonment Internally displaced persons Joseph Kony Judith Butler Kevin Power Levinas LRA Obama space Sudanese civil war Teju Cole torture trauma UNHCR US soldier World Food Programme

Contemporary fiction about global conflict is often concerned with an imaginative collapsing of space. Putting emotional affect to instrumental use, it works to raise awareness about events that go untold by the world’s media, either challenging conventional understandings of…

Issue 4.2 Previous Issues

Drones and Dissociation

Dorothy Butchard May 13, 2015 No Comments Atef Abu Saif contemporary fiction drone empathy Franz Kafka George Brant Joyce Ralph Ellison Reaper Teju Cole tweet Victim Virginia Woolf warfare

In January 2013 the novelist Teju Cole released a series of tweets introduced as “Seven Short Stories about Drones.” Each rewrites the opening of a classic novel, cutting off the narrative with a drone strike. For example, the third in the series rains “fire from heaven” …

Issue 4.1 Previous Issues

Litter, Landscape and The Road

Antony Mullen February 27, 2015 No Comments contemporary fiction contemporary literature Cormac McCarthy Cultural Landscapes dystopia literature post-9/11 literature post-apocalyptic fiction postmodernism trauma

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) presents a dystopian vision of a near-future world in which most organic vegetation has died and human life is becoming increasingly rare. It is not unusual for dystopian fiction to …

Issue 2.4 - Special Issue "Thatcher's Legacies" Previous Issues

The Allure of the 1980s

Christopher Vardy July 21, 2013 1 Comment 1980s 1984-85 miners' strike Anthony Cartwright Cathi Unsworth contemporary British history contemporary fiction David Peace Denise Mina dystopia End of History Gordon Burn Irvine Welsh literature Nineteen Eighty Three nostalgia post-industrial landscapes retro-memory Rubik's cubes Skagboys Thatcherism Trainspotting trauma

When we remember, represent or consume the recent past, we often do so through the alluring prism of nostalgia. In Ali Smith’s short story ‘astute, fiery, luxurious’…