16 March 2015
If you’re like me and grew up reading Raymond Carver alongside Raymond Chandler and Marvel comics alongside Flannery O’Connor, you know it is a great time for fiction. In 2015, the walls between genre fiction and literary fiction are mostly in ruins. The New Yorker devotes issues to science fiction and crime, the Library of America collects work by H. P. Lovecraft and Kurt Vonnegut, the National Book Foundation awards medals to Stephen King and Ursula K. Le Guin, and MFA and Clarion grads debate George R. R. Martin and Junot Diaz alike. If you are a teenager now, the concept of the genre wars could feel as anachronistic as cassette tapes and landlines.