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Every week we identify the best-written works of fiction, speculative fiction, and nonfiction from recent releases and shortlists for major prizes, and from our subscribers’ submissions. We also publish articles by their authors on prose technique and AI writing, and on the last Friday of the month we publish for paid subscribers the best-written book of the month.
The best-written recent releases»
“A sumptuous work of autofiction that plumbs the mirage-like landscapes of the border region and the frictions that simmer between neighboring nations.”—Time, The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026
[A wild wind; wind from the north]
The sound of hooves beating on the sandy ground comes first. Then the breathing, strained and short-winded. Panting. A snort. The white ground splits to allow the emergence of twisted acacias, with their rounded crowns and roots embedded deeply in the earth, and the thorny branches of mesquites, from which hang long, narrow pods and, now that it’s almost spring, these yellow flowers. The galloping doesn’t stop. Horseshoes dodge the spherical barrel cacti, whose burnished spiny tips appear here and there along the road. The white flowers of the anacahuita. The roadrunners. The worm lizards. Hadn’t he been told this was a desert? There’s no time to stop and look. From above, the light of an intransigent sun falls on the creosote bush, the coyotillo, the cat’s claw. And the wind, raising the pinkish, gray, and cinnamon-colored dust of the plain, collides with the prickly pads of the nopal that ascend step by step, toward the sky. The earth crumbles as he passes, and everything around him thirsts for water. His mouth, most of all. His larynx. His stomach. He’s not sure how many hours he’s been mounted on the horse—thighs around the reddish torso, shoulders slumped forward, hands clenching the reins, and shoes crammed into the stirrups—but he’d like to feel he was nearing his destination. He’s been told that there—a day’s ride if he manages to get a change of horse—is where things are really happening. He’s been told that if he wants to see direct action, if he truly wants to change the world, he should head farther north. There, just a stone’s throw from the border, is Estación Camarón.
A strike has just broken out there.
Our pick is here»
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Information about submitting to Auraist is here. Our standards are as high as for our other picks, but if we publish your work, we’ll invite you to answer our questions on prose style. Your answers will be considered for inclusion in the print publication of these answers by many of the world’s best writers.
Guides to prose style»
‘Voice is the angle at which exposition can flow into the narrative—and that’s about the single most important aspect of a piece.’
George Saunders proposed on his substack that it’s in the editing process that literary voice can emerge -- the more a writer edits the more they’ll make choices different to other writers, resulting in a voice and style unique to them. What do you understand by ‘voice’ in writing, and how much does this matter to your own?
I’m sure this it’s this way for some writers, yeah. For others, it happens precisely at the point of contact of pen to page, of fingertip to key, of voice to recorder. Like… William Gay, say. I think the qualities and peculiarities of his prose were maybe a product of the revision process. Bret Easton Ellis, though, I think that’s just how he writes, from line 1. And? Doesn’t matter either way, I say. What matters, finally, is the product, not the process.
To me, “voice” isn’t the diction-level or the ‘sound’ or the prosody or any of that, though I know that’s the main way “voice” is understood, or talked about. To me, voice is the angle at which exposition can flow into the narrative—and that’s about the single most important aspect of a piece.
In my novel The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, the first line is “What I remember best about my father are the suicide notes.” What this signals to the reader is that those suicide notes are going to play some part here—we’re going to see them (yes), they’re going to be a structuring device (yes), they’re going to make sense (no).
So, to me, “voice” is kind of an establishing of tone, or a set of permissions. Both, really. It’s the single most vital decision you can make in a piece, but it’s got to be functionally invisible, too. That’s a big part of what makes writing fun: the challenge, the difficulty. But, things that are challenging and difficult, they’re the most rewarding, aren’t they?