“Jamie Lloyd does not coddle us with the escape of the red curtain. His dramaturgy welcomes controversy—invites us all into the theater, whether or not one has a ticket.”

“Today’s anti-immigration-activated fascist movement recapitulates elements of the past but is also taking on new forms and dimensions.”

In Jamie Lloyd’s 2025 “Evita,” Rachel Zegler left the theater to perform her iconic ballad on the balcony of the London Palladium. Inside, the production wouldn't let the theatergoer forget the truth about Peronism.

“What precedes the unprecedented?” New at PB: @naomipaik.bsky.social & Catherine S. Ramírez introduce their series Fascism’s Building Blocks: A US Infrastructure Decades in the Making.

In the next installment of our series Fascism's Building Blocks, Justin Akers Chacón looks at the long tradition of anti-immigrant violence perpetrated by a “partnership of the capitalist class, the state, and activated middle-class fascists.”

“Rather than striving to recreate a historical moment, the set of the 2025 revival reimagines the media forms in which Evita was first represented to the Argentinian people, and eventually, the world beyond.”

“I'm not sorry at all that I was made to read the canon. But there was definitely a disconnect between that reading and that literature and the world around me.”

“The roots of today’s emergent fascism run deep. So what is to be done? A return to a liberal status quo won’t save us.” For the next two weeks, join us for a series commissioned by @naomipaik.bsky.social & Catherine S. Ramírez, Fascism’s Building Blocks.

In a new series commissioned by @naomipaik.bsky.social & Catherine S. Ramírez, contributors examine 4 statutes that paved the way for today’s emergent fascism: the IRCA; the AEDPA; the IIRIRA; and the PRWORA. Read Paik & Ramírez‘s intro to the series, new at PB.

“Everywhere is interesting if you look properly, if you look carefully enough.” Author Ivan Vladislavić has lived in Johannesburg for 50 years. For Novel Dialogue, he recalls how he got to know the city, in the style of George Pérec: by throwing a dart at a map.

“By forcing the audience closer to Evita through a new (camera) lens, the production implicates us all in the violence skirting the musical’s score—and even more significantly, the blood-stained coins funding the Western spectacle.”

“Let a thousand literary reevaluations bloom, we say!” New at PB: An open letter to T magazine on their (and our) literary b-sides.

“A lot of my work looks fragmentary, but I think it looks like that because I really am trying to respond to the material which feels that way.” In a new episode of Novel Dialogue, Ivan Vladislavić is in conversation with critic and scholar Jeanne-Marie Jackson.

“Loving Boynton and being a completist go well together, because it doesn’t take very long to go through it all.” New at PB: In the latest B-Sides, Christopher T. Fan (@chrisfan.bsky.social) revisits Sandra Boynton.

New at PB: In an open letter to T magazine, our editors discuss our series B-Sides, which we’ve published since 2016, and T Magazine’s recent “The Great Literary B-Sides.”

“Apart from the commitment to excellence, there is something jarring about a cops-on-campus romance that represents the police as an inclusive, sensitive presence in and around a university in the contemporary United States.”

“My thinking behind the structure of Double Negative was to kind of take cross sections through time, rather than write a continuous chronological linear novel that, you know, just unfolded in some neat way.”

“We do not need to work harder when reading Boynton. Her work, especially when taken as a whole, rewards pause.”

“Some writers of note that have written for our series include Ursula K. Le Guin, Caleb Crain, Merve Emre, Timothy Bewes, Toril Moi.”

“To discern a lack of artistry in a production with a focused aesthetic only reveals our discomfort with nonconforming works of art.” New at PB: Miranda Jensen on the mixed reception of Jamie Lloyd’s 2025 West End revival of “Evita” (coming to Broadway in 2027).

“I may have been addled when I compared Wordsworth to Boynton.” The final lines of “The Going to Bed Book” called to mind, for @chrisfan.bsky.social, Wordsworth’s “Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course / With rocks, & stones, and trees.”

“We could not help but notice that in your April 17 issue, you tasked author Michael Cunningham with listing ‘his favorite less-famous books by famous writers,’ in a piece titled 'The Great Literary B-Sides.'” Read an open letter to the editor of T magazine:

“According to public opinion, Zegler is our Evita, undoubtedly—but on the wrong stage.” In a new review of Jamie Lloyd’s 2025 West End revival of “Evita,” Miranda Jensen explores the contradiction of wanting both daring new productions & faithful remakes.

There’s catharsis to be found in Zoe B. Wallbrook's “History Lessons,” the story of a brilliant academic who solves a campus murder, writes Roxanne Panchasi, but “at the same time, Daphne’s, the novel’s, & the author’s politics are mysteries that persist for me.”

“The notion of the quintessential Johannesburg book might be quite a cheeky one. There are so many Johannesburgs.”

“New at PB: Since 2016 we have published a series we call B-Sides, commissioned and curated by our longtime editor John Plotz.”

In Jamie Lloyd’s revival of “Evita,” writes Miranda Jensen, “we cannot help but weep for Eva Perón’s infamy & condemn the commercial stage on which she lives and dies still.” Our new Evita, Rachel Zegler, recently won an Olivier Award for her performance.

“Greetings from Public Books, your fellow laborers in the media!” So begins an open letter to the editor of the @nytimes.com's T Magazine. Read on here:

In a new episode of our partner podcast Novel Dialogue, author Ivan Vladislavić is in conversation with critic and scholar Jeanne-Marie Jackson about a writer's relationship to place.

New at PB: Roxanne Panchasi on how the algorithm has outdone itself: “The monetized ether was recommending a page-turner about a Black woman scholar of France and empire to a real-life, nonwhite woman scholar of France and empire.”

“The book’s final verse, never far from my mind, is one of the most devastating I have ever read.” You may have been read these lines as a child, or you may have read them to your own. Christopher T. Fan (@chrisfan.bsky.social) on “The Going to Bed Book.”

Infamously beloved Eva Perón was born 107 years ago today—and her legacy has been commodified since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita. New at PB: Miranda Jensen reviews Jamie Lloyd’s 2025 West End revival.

New at PB: An encomium to Sandra Boynton by Christopher T. Fan (@chrisfan.bsky.social).

“Writing a novel that starts out with a homicide is definitely one way to release your feelings about the kind of workplace troll who sucks the oxygen out of every room they enter.”

New at PB: Miranda Jensen reviews Jamie Lloyd’s 2025 West End revival of "Evita," starring Rachel Zegler—coming to Broadway in 2027. Unlike other interpretations, Jensen writes, Lloyd's production doesn't shy away from the real history behind Peronism.

“Nowhere are Boynton’s many talents and longstanding thematic commitments more pronounced than in The Going to Bed Book.”

“We’re not only defending this land to live here. We’re also defending this land so that we can die here.” In conversation with Elizabeth Polanco, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo discusses creation, collaboration, and her home, Puerto Rico.

New at PB: In the latest installment of B-Sides, Christopher T. Fan (@chrisfan.bsky.social) revisits “The Going to Bed Book” by Sandra Boynton. The board book's final lines, Fan writes, evoke “the state of zero stimulus that, for Freud, is the aim of all life.”

“Yet, amid this instability and in the face of an unknown future, the concerns from agents are the same as they’ve always been… ‘Will people buy books? And more importantly, will they read them?’” www.publicbooks.org/what-literat... @lbmcgrath.bsky.social

Looking for a mystery that’s a little edgier than the typical cozy fare? New at PB, @rpanchasi.bsky.social reviews Zoe B. Wallbrook's “History Lessons” (@sohopress.bsky.social).

“The novel also does something for the reader interested in retribution. In 'History Lessons,' people get what they deserve.”

Before the pandemic, filmmaker Natalia Lassalle-Morillo joined theater company Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol and youth theater group Proyecto Yivi, to document the making of a play in Santo Domingo Yanhuitlán.

“She's trying to find family and community. And for her, that has to happen in Miami only because that's where she is. But it's not the place that changes the person she becomes.”

New at PB: @rpanchasi.bsky.social reviews Zoe B. Wallbrook's “History Lessons” (@sohopress.bsky.social), a new addition to a “seemingly insatiable market demand for fantasies of school and university life.”

Here's the most accessible of their series of essays on the topic, "Who Gets to Be a Writer?" in @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-to-...

“There was something about salsa in particular and the way that salsa used storytelling that I found really incredible.” New on Writing Latinos: Jaquira Díaz talks with Geraldo Cadava about the inspiration behind her latest novel “This Is the Only Kingdom.”

“Yanhuitlán is a town where you can feel the absence of people. You can feel that there are generations of people that have migrated.”

I loved Jaquira Díaz's new novel, This Is the Only Kingdom! And I loved talking with her about it on Writing Latinos--for @publicbooks.bsky.social. www.publicbooks.org/jaquira-diaz...

“People have a certain level of power and they want to hold on to that power. And in order to do that, they have to oppress other individuals that are different from them.”

“Yanhuitlán is a town where you can feel the absence of people. You can feel that there are generations of people that have migrated.” Natalia Lassalle-Morillo on documenting a theater group, a project that turned into her film “Passage of the Spiral.”