Heaven is (Probably) a Place on Earth
Mya Frazier writes for Aeon on the “heaven tourism memoir” (seen in books such as Heaven is for Real and The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven) and what its…
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Michelle Vider
192 posts
Donna Hemans is the author of two novels, River Woman and Tea by the Sea. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Slice, Shenandoah, Electric Literature, and Ms. Magazine. She lives in Maryland and is the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers.
The Truthening of Science Fiction
Cecilia D’Anastasio explores the origins of science fiction via Lucian of Samosata’s True History. Lucian’s True History, a second-century satire of contemporary travel writing that took classical mythology and its…
Myth Remaking
For Lit Hub, Michele Filgate interviews Lidia Yuknavitch on her new novel, The Small Backs of Children, to explore the idea of new symbols and mythology for contemporary culture: I’m not clear…
Complements to the Canon
Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths) writes for Seven Scribes on the experience of discovering novels by black writers to act as a necessary complement to reading Harper Lee’s reductive portrayals of…
Bloom and Grow Whenever
What exactly is the “Penelope Fitzgerald” problem? Perhaps it is indeed the ability to write one’s mind, with no regard for trends. The ability to do so comes from the…
NY or LA? Try Neither
At Hyperallergic, Claire Voon breaks down a report from New York’s Center for an Urban Future. The report’s findings include evidence that New York City has outpaced Los Angeles for…
A College Education, Measured and Graded and Ranked and Weighed
The [Department of Education’s] report states: “In today’s world, college is not a luxury that only some Americans can afford to enjoy; it is an economic, civic, and personal necessity…
Librarians in Wartime
Over the holiday weekend, Linton Weeks wrote for NPR’s History Dept. on the critical role of librarians in World Wars I and II. Weeks spoke to Cara Bertram, an archivist…
The Man Behind the Ivory Curtain
At The Chronicle of Higher Education, the writer behind @AcademicsSay (better known as “Shit Academics Say”) reveals himself as Nathan Hall, an associate professor at McGill University. In addition to…
How to Build a Joan of Arc
For Pictorial at Jezebel, Kelly Faircloth interviews Helen Castor, the author of Joan of Arc: A History, a book that attempts to recreate the context into which Joan of Arc…
Detecting Genre
Like a detective novel, these books are characterized by a central mystery and the process of detection that leads to solving that mystery. The mystery, however, is not a crime—it’s…
The Origins of Slang
Over at Full Stop, Tammela Platt reviews The Essence of Jargon by Alice Becker-Ho, a look into the origins of slang as a protection developed by marginalized populations.