Read along.
Whether to accompany your reading of Marguerite Young’s Miss MacIntosh, My Darling or to entice you to begin it, stay up-to-date on the most recent exchanges among writers Lori Feathers, Anthony Garrett, and Tara Cheesman celebrating and responding to Young’s magnum opus as they each make their way through the novel.
“The individual is the one illusion.”
One of the most repeated themes in Miss MacIntosh is fluidity of the borders that define identity, consciousness, and states of being. The novel’s aesthetic commitment to this idea encourages a collective approach that reflects the novel’s polyvocal content. With this in mind, we landed on the epistolary criticism you will encounter here.
about your interlocutors
Lori Feathers is a writer in Dallas, Texas, and a co-owner/founder of Interabang Books where she is the store’s book buyer. She co-hosts the critically acclaimed books podcast Across the Pond; is founding Chair of the Republic of Consciousness Prize, US and Canada, which honors the work of independent publishers; and co-creator of the Inside Literary Prize for incarcerated persons. Previously she served on the elected board of the National Book Critics Circle.
Anthony Garrett is a novelist and Coeditor in Chief of the literary magazine atmospheric quarterly. In 2023 he was named a Tin House Scholar. He is at work on the novel Neither Themselves nor Each Other. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife and children and their cat Em Dash.
Tara Cheesman is a freelance book critic and National Book Critics Circle member. She was on the reading committee for the NBCC inaugural 2022 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. She was a 2018-2019 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Judge. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Words Without Borders, CrimeReads, Guernica, The Mystery Tribune, and other online publications. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. You can follow her on Instagram @taracheesman and subscribe to her newsletter Ex Libris.
