Shannon Carlin

Carlin is a contributor for TIME.

Recent Articles

Lessons for Survival

Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse” opens with Emily Raboteau writing that her essay collection is a quilt “pieced together out of love by a parent who wants her children to inherit a world...

By Shannon Carlin

The Light Eaters

Are plants intelligent? It’s the complex and surprisingly controversial question at the heart of journalist Zoë Schlanger’s revelatory debut, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life...

By Shannon Carlin

Consent

In 1970, at the age of 17, Jill Ciment began a relationship with painter Arnold Mesches, a married father of two who was 30 years her senior. In her 1996 memoir, Half a Life, she...

By Shannon Carlin

The Book of Love

Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link’s debut novel, The Book of Love, is a fantasy that tackles sibling rivalry, complicated teen friendships, and transcendent love. Nearly a year after high schoolers Laura, Daniel, and Mo die...

By Shannon Carlin

Headshot

Rita Bullwinkel’s bold debut novel, Headshot, takes readers inside a run-down boxing ring in Reno, Nev., where eight young women compete for the Daughters of America Cup. Each chapter focuses on an individual fight taking...

By Shannon Carlin

Fi

Six years ago, Alexander Fuller’s 21-year-old son died in his sleep. With her moving fifth memoir, Fi: A Memoir of My Son—named in honor of her late child, whose nickname was Fi—the author sets out...

By Shannon Carlin

Undue Burden

With Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, journalist Shefali Luthra paints a portrait of reproductive rights following the fall of Roe v. Wade. After the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to...

By Shannon Carlin

The Great Divide

Cristina Henríquez’s fourth novel, The Great Divide, is a historical epic set in Panama amid the construction of the famous canal and the deadly mosquito-borne disease that nearly derailed its completion. The sweeping tale takes...

By Shannon Carlin

Help Wanted

In Adelle Waldman’s shrewd second novel, Help Wanted, the employees of a struggling superstore in a small, upstate New York town don’t just get mad, they get even. The nine members of the “movement team,”...

By Shannon Carlin

Someone Like Us

Award-winning author Dinaw Mengestu’s fourth novel, Someone Like Us, is a surreal exploration of self-discovery. Seeking solace from his floundering marriage, journalist Mamush returns to his Ethiopian mother’s home in the Virginia suburbs only to...

By Shannon Carlin

Long Island

Long Island, Colm Tóibín’s follow-up to his best-selling 2009 novel Brooklyn, picks up nearly 25 years after Eilis Lacey emigrated from Ireland and secretly married an Italian American plumber. The book begins in 1976, and...

By Shannon Carlin

We Were the Universe

In Kimberly King Parsons’ debut novel, We Were the Universe, indescribable grief knocks a suburban Texas mother out of orbit. Four years after losing her little sister, Kit is struggling to hold it together. While...

By Shannon Carlin

Accordion Eulogies

To better understand his Mexican roots, Spirit Run author Noé Álvarez knew he had to get to the truth about his larger-than-life paternal grandfather, a traveling accordionist who his descendants believe put a curse on...

By Shannon Carlin

Hip-Hop Is History

Hip-Hop Is History is “not an encyclopedia,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson warns in the opening pages of his fifth book. Instead, the spiritual sequel to his 2021 collection, Music Is History, offers an intimate look at...

By Shannon Carlin

A Sunny Place for Shady People

Mariana Enriquez’s short-story collection, A Sunny Place for Shady People, is set in a world that is supernatural, surreal, and sordid. Across the follow-up to Our Share of Night, translated by Megan McDowell, the Argentine...

By Shannon Carlin

American Diva

American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous is poet and cultural critic Deborah Paredez's impassioned deep dive into the etymology of the titular term. “I want to know how and why divas, once synonymous with virtuosity, became...

By Shannon Carlin

Catalina

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s semi-autobiographical debut novel tells the story of Catalina Ituralde, a cunning yet naive undocumented immigrant on the verge of graduating from Harvard. Due to her immigration status, Catalina, a blue-collar New Yorker...

By Shannon Carlin

The Anthropologists

An idealistic couple’s hunt for a new apartment becomes the catalyst for a quarter-life crisis in Ayşegül Savaş’s insightful third novel. Inspired by her 2021 New Yorker short story, “Future Selves,” The Anthropologists follows Asya...

By Shannon Carlin

Connie

In 2019, Connie Chung learned that she was the namesake for many Asian American women born between the late 1970s and mid-’90s. “It may be difficult to believe,” she writes in her memoir, Connie. “But...

By Shannon Carlin

The Hypocrite

The plot of The Hypocrite sounds like the setup to a joke: a middle-aged novelist walks into a play about an out-of-touch writer only to discover the show is about him. The kicker? The theatrical...

By Shannon Carlin
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