New Books In Literary Studies

Sumanth Prabhaker is the editor-in-chief of Orion and the founding editor of Madra Press. He earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was an editor for the journal Ecotone. Founded in 1982, Orion has evolved as a magazine over the years from the quieter, reverential environmental sensitivity that continues to distinguish it into also a wider awareness of global injustices that especially impact the Global South. In this episode, three essays were discussed that under his leadership, Sumanth Prabhaker nurtured into existence over a span that sometimes stretched into years. First among them is “How the Lark Got Her Crest” by Marianne Jay Erhardt from the Summer 2023 issue. It works from the slightest of bases, the few lines of Aesop’s fable about a lark, into a rather profound piece about how one might bury one’s father “in your head’ like the lark does. Language and honoring one’s parent becomes the grounding in this case. Second up, “The Other Bibles” by Katri