Frightful Small In Here Tonight: Excerpt from White Nights In Split Town City

"White Nights in Split Town City, the novel from which the piece below is excerpted, doesn’t want to hurt you. I mean, sure it does, it certainly does, but it wants to hurt you in just the way you want art to hurt. This novel wants to hurt you in just the way you want art to hurt, and it also wants to slay you, the way art just wants to fucking slay you. And it will. It will also deliver you, unless you really can’t handle beauty, violence, comedy, loss, desire, and decay. But of course you can. You wouldn’t be cruising the stalls of Electric Literature if you weren’t out for the serious stuff, the grown-up play." - Sam LipsyteAbout the Annie DeWitt it a fiction writer, essayist and critic. Her writing has appeared widely in Granta, Tin House, The Believer, Guernica, Esquire, BOMB, Electric Literature, Bookforum, NOON, The LA Review of Books, The American Reader, amongst others. Annie holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia School of the Arts where she now teaches. Annie was a Co-Founding Editor of Gigantic, a literary journal of short prose and art. Her debut novel WHITE NIGHTS IN SPLIT TOWN CITY just released from Tyrant Books in August 2016. Her debut story collection CLOSEST WITHOUT GOING OVER was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy prize. Annie pens an occasional nonfiction column about art, literature, film and criticism for The Believer, called “Various Paradigms.” She was recently recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship.About the Guest Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collections Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and The Fun Parts and three The Ask, The Subject Steve and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.About the Recommended Reading is the weekly fiction magazine of Electric Literature, publishing here every Wednesday morning. In addition to featuring our own recommendations of original, previously unpublished fiction, we invite established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommend great work from their pages, past and present. Follow Recommended Reading on Medium and never miss the latest issue, or become a member for full access to the archives. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.