Different Voices
In the hilariously titled “The Fragile Ears of Men,” Leah Finnegan analyzes the gender politics of female singers’ voices, and why male music critics are so irked by Joanna Newsom:…
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Katie O'Brien
142 posts
Katie O'Brien is an English major at Cornell University, where she writes for kitsch magazine, DJs for a rock station, and complains about the cold. Find her on Twitter @abluekite.
Patti Smith’s “Obsessively Literary” New Memoir
Over at the New York Review of Books, Geoffrey O’Brien discusses iconic poet and punk-rocker Patti Smith’s new memoir, M Train: What the book expresses supremely well is the tentativeness of every…
Love and Loss at the Unclaimed Baggage Center
At Racked, Stephie Grob Plante muses on the melancholy-yet-hopeful experience of shopping at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a family-run business that sells items from lost luggage that was never reunited with its…
Printed Books Are Here to Stay
A recent New York Times report showed that e-book sales are declining while printed book sales are doing well. Over at Lit Hub, Adam Sternbergh argues that the printed book…
Music Magazines Are For Men Only?
At the Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber responds to the recent controversial quote by Condé Nast Chief Digital Editor that acquiring Pitchfork brings “a very passionate audience of Millennial males into our…
The Power of Pen Names
At Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll explores the history of authors using pen names, and what happens when these pseudonyms take on their own persona: Under the best conditions, they can…
A Writer’s Love-Hate Relationship with the Internet
Over at Vela Magazine, Sarah Menkedick discusses her complicated relationship with the endless distraction and instant gratification of the Internet as a writer: My default instinct is to skew towards…
No Narrator like a Gatsby Narrator
Over at Lit Hub, Robert Hahn finds homage to the voice of Nick Carraway in the fiction of Donna Tartt, Lorrie Moore, and Richard Ford, and discusses the lasting allure…
Censorship in College Newspapers
At the Atlantic, David R. Wheeler examines recent attempts to limit freedom of the press on college campuses, tracking conflicts between university officials and college newspapers and court cases: In…
The “Unfathomable Uniqueness” of Lucia Berlin
At Electric Literature, Kelly Luce discusses the new collection of Lucia Berlin’s stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women, why she loves her fiction, and how the author’s work has often…
Rock Meets Paper
Musicians have always drawn inspiration from literary artists, and vice versa. Over at Lit Hub, Tobias Carroll explores the increasingly literary side of contemporary rock festivals: Perhaps the rise of…
Getting Personal
In response to Slate’s viral article about the rise of the “harrowing personal essay,” prominent editors from different publications weigh in on the importance of confessional writing, reasons for its gender…