Posts by author
Kirstin Allio
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Personal Advice
Writing for The Point, Megan Marz explores the new “essayistic style” of advice columns and advice/fiction/memoir hybrids from writers such as Cary Tennis, Cheryl Strayed, Kristen Dombek, Heather Havrilesky, and Sheila Heti. Are these writers pioneering a “new literary genre”?
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“Fruitful Bewilderment”
At The New Republic, Sarah Ruhl elicits thoughts and impromptu poems from poet Max Ritvo on spirituality, performance comedy, and “Fruitful Bewilderment.” On spirituality, Ritvo says, “The first time I heard Schubert’s Agnus Dei at a Mass, it made me feel…
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The Generosity of Anonymity
At n+1, Dayna Tortorici defends Elena Ferrante’s anonymity against yet another round of exposure, calling the unmaskers out for insensitivity and greed. Tortorici believes it’s all too easy to be distracted from the integrity of the book by the author’s…
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Write Every Day
It’s poet John James’s turn for a conversation with the Kenyon Review. Author of the chapbook Chthonic, James dissects the process of writing a single poem, “History (n.),” the prescient unconscious, history as diagnosis, writing while parenting, and his connection…
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Poems to Prose
I wanted to speak directly, to say exactly what I meant, to make statements with sharp edges, to try and pin things down. For Catapult, David Szalay chronicles the unorthodox origins of his latest novel: from writer’s block and experimenting…
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Feminist Feast
Sixteen feminist poetry collections, old and new, showcased at Bustle, prove just how rich, diverse, and actionable poetry can be. Author C. CE Miller says, “As feminist icons like Elizabeth Warren and the notorious RBG have recently taught us (thanks,…
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“Debate/Discuss/Rend Garments”
Over at Electric Literature, Ryan Chapman interviews Teddy Wayne, whose third novel, Loner, seems to effortlessly blow by the clichés of the campus novel: as Ryan calls it, “the writer’s equivalent of the pop ballad.” Wayne begins by citing “non-campus”…
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“Dear Abby” for Books
Stop any comparisons… turn to your own project with laser-beam focus, and bolster your own campaign as if you’ve spent years of blood, sweat, and tears working on this creative achievement—because chances are, you have spent years working on it.…
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Looking Back at Albee
For the New Yorker, Hilton Als reaches across Edward Albee’s long career to take the pulse of the themes and concerns of the late, great playwright. Memory, attachment, cruelty, and Albee’s sense of himself as an outsider all informed the dramas. Als…
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The Power of Thought
Over at VICE, Lauren Oyler interviews Mark Greif, author of the recently released Against Everything. Greif trains his keen thinking on current culture, from the almost paradoxical way sanctimony and change seem to go hand in hand of late, to the…
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“The Disjointedness of Life”
For the New Yorker, Peter Moskowitz talks to poet Tommy Pico about anger, juxtaposition, and inheritance: He told me that he uses poetry to square two identities that don’t fit together well: being a poor, queer kid from the rez, and…
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Don’t Let Anyone Tell You They Weren’t Real
The collection both questions and honors a world in which we form emotional bonds to characters who exist for us mostly, or entirely, through various technological projections. Writing for BOMB, David Burr Gerrard explores humanity, reality, and dystopia in Alexander…