Posts by author
Guia Cortassa
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The Other Half
By forcing blue-state liberal types to reckon with a demographic they had long dismissed as a punch line—low-income, uneducated whites in economically depleted regions—he [Donald Trump] awakened them to the fact that the groovy progressive social values they had assumed were…
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Voting Across the Pages
The political becoming local and, in effect, personal, is what I think we saw playing out all across Columbia last week. If Ocosingo War Diary teaches us anything, it’s that what might seem like an obvious choice—ending a war of…
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Where Our Favorite Stories Lived
Particularly in the case of children’s writers, some part of me might hope that these tourist sites will be living manifestations of beloved stories, of stories that seemed like physical locations, places to escape, as real as real life. Maybe…
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Profiling the Princess of Darkness
The four books Gaitskill produced over the next two decades, all of them rife with sexual violence and self-destruction, cemented her reputation as the “Princess of Darkness”—as did her much-discussed past. Gaitskill, who was born in Kentucky and raised in…
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When 2 Become 1
One day I went to work on my novel and, to my surprise, a part of it had been rewritten. My boyfriend, seeing my unease, told me that he had done it, that he thought I needed to be funnier.…
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Telling, Not Showing
As I processed a dominant Euro-American writing pedagogy from the perspective of an aspiring fiction writer and an immigrant critic of color, I couldn’t stop wondering: are we, in 21st-century America, overvaluing a sight-based approach to storytelling? And could this…
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Loving Writing Back
My name is on the phone bill. The student loan bills, medical bills, internet service provider bills, car insurance bills, the lease. My name is on three bank accounts, the present combined balances of which are insufficient to pay any…
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Two Mexicans in Paris
I say without irony that Laia and I observe each other with a kind of “epistemological distance.” We follow and keep each other company with a precise balance of mutual admiration and respect, and a capacity for honest, sharp criticism.…
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Sharing Spaces
Many times the tone just simply says, “I do not feel you belong here.” Over at Saint Heron, Solange Knowles shares her experience of spending time in predominantly white spaces.
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Catapulting Humor into Your Writing
Following the recent announcement of its merger with Counterpoint Press, Catapult is starting a new season of writing workshops! And, our own Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist is among the featured instructors, teaching a two-day masterclass in humor writing, during which “each student will brainstorm,…
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California Tales
San Francisco filmmaker Jenni Olson has just released her new film, a cinematic essay titled The Royal Road. Made up of historical research material and lyrical, personal monologues, the film is “a primer on Junipero Serra’s Spanish colonization of California…
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Notes on Craft
Supposedly, the most-common question for a writer is , “Where do you get your ideas?” but in my experience, it is actually, “Do you outline?” I don’t outline, but I do fill notebooks with scribbled thoughts about where the story…