November 2015
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The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
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Marginalized
Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake — not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written.…
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Holiday Specials from Murray and Carey
The season of holiday specials is upon us, and Stereogum reported on two that cover just about the entirety of what a person could want from a festive made-for-TV movie. Bill Murray is enlisting an all-star cast for his version…
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How a Freelancer Prays
The writing life is hard, especially in the finance department and in the unstable nature of a freelancer’s status. Over at McSweeney’s, Marco Kaye writes a poignant representation of the inner monologue of the pleading, praying freelancer: Assist me in negotiating…
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Next Letter in the Mail: Melanie Simonich
We’re getting ready to send out our next Letter in the Mail, and it’s a very special letter from Melanie Simonich! Melanie writes to us about her father, the moon, and a unique friendship that began (and continue to this day) when she responded…
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The Lessons of Mapplethorpe
It might be ill-advised to reduce an artist’s life and work to a single observation, the magic key that unlocks everything, but in the case of Robert Mapplethorpe there is a pronounced duality—in the themes and subjects depicted in his…
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Make Your Writing A Beautiful Mess
A lovely and thoughtful argument for writing with a pencil. Hear her out before you decide.
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Spotlight: “Mind” by Colleen Louise Barry
“Mind” is an installment of the ongoing comic series Idiomatic from writer and artist Colleen Louise Barry.
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Song of the Day: “Olivia”
To mark the anniversary of a late, great hip hop icon whose very name inspires controversy, XXL Magazine asked former members of the legendary rap group Wu-Tang to remember their friend, Russell Tyrone Jones, known otherwise as Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Lyricist Raekwon recalled the following anecdote:…
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Notable Portland: 11/19–11/25
Thursday 11/19: PQ Monthly holds it’s holiday issue release party with hors d’oeuvres and a no-host bar with signature holiday drinks. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, 5 p.m., free. Poetic Justice, a social justice poetry and spoken word open mic,…
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The Enduring Ordinariness of Parisian Life
We’re defiant, but shaky. We can’t get over what we’ve seen, what we’ve heard, who we’ve lost, and we don’t really want to. But we’ll eventually get used to the fact that it happened. It will become part of our…
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The Ivy Halls of Racism
Larissa Pham writes about racism and Yale for Guernica: This tension is not new. It is a product of the systemic racism built into the institution, as ubiquitous as the architecture that characterizes the place in our shared consciousness. “Everyone…