Posts by author
Katie O’Brien
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Self-Reflection
At Lit Hub, Kathryn Harrison discusses her relationship with her reflection and the asymmetry in her face as she ages: Time passes, months, then years, and that bathroom mirror loses its power to frighten me. Still, I find it mysterious,…
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Goodbye Important, Inappropriate Literary Man
Jezebel’s Jia Tolentino discusses “the end of the era of the important, inappropriate literary man” in context of the sexual abuse allegations against Iowa Workshop visiting professor Thomas Sayer Ellis. She posits that social media is allowing victims more visibility…
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To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish
At the Guardian, Ros Barber explains why she believes self-publishing is not a valid alternative to traditional routes: Traditional publishing is the only way to go for someone who writes literary fiction. With genre fiction, self-publishing can turn you into…
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Imbalance of Power
In a powerful essay at The Toast, Katie Rose Guest Pryal shares her story of fearing being kicked out of her graduate program after rejecting her professor’s sexual advances: I was truly terrified—all of my hard work and all of my…
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Stranger than Real Life
At Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll discusses the enduring appeal of strange fairy tales, and their influence on contemporary fiction: They remind us that the larger world is inherently complex, that the lessons imparted by stories of wicked creatures and good-hearted…
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As a Matter of Fact
The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore laments the devaluation of truth in politics with the rise of “big data”: The era of the fact is coming to an end: the place once held by “facts” is being taken over by “data.”…
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Fear and Loathing in the Locker Room
Over at The Toast, Naomi Gordon-Loebl recounts the particularly fraught experience of being gender-nonconforming while in the locker room: My parents raised me to believe that my boy-girl self was beautiful and natural. I got a crewcut and began to…
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The Cultural Significance of Whitney Houston
At Vela Magazine, Danielle Jackson discusses Whitney Houston as an embodiment of black excellence, and the continued erasure of black artists’ contributions to commercial music: Houston and the entire lineage of black women performers that preceded her invented techniques and sounds…
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Before Virginia Woolf, There Was Lola Ridge
At The New Republic, Terese Svoboda discusses “the forgotten feminism of Lola Ridge,” a radical poet who she says paved the way for feminist writers like Woolf with her 1919 speech “Women and Creative Will.”
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Literature Out of Pain in Afghanistan
As part of Electric Literature’s The Writing Life Around the World series, Fazilhaq Hashimi discusses the influence of pain and social activism on the literary landscape in Afghanistan: In Afghanistan, we do not write for fun, passion, or money but to…
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Re-Rethinking Harper Lee
At Lit Hub, Kate Jenkins discusses Southern literature’s clumsy history in dealing with race, and theorizes that, in light of Go Set A Watchman, Harper Lee may have actually been much more ahead of her time than we thought: Did…
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Fan Fiction Gone Wild
Slate’s Laura Miller details the bizarre tale of the copyright lawsuit between two No. 1 New York Times best-selling fantasy authors, showing the potential messiness of fan fiction going mainstream: If these tropes sound familiar to you, you’re not alone.…