Posts by author
Lauren O’Neal
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Ignore This Advice
Policy Mic has a fun post about the four worst things people tell young writers about writing. Perhaps the most important of these to disregard is “Good writers always write well”: Imagine you are someone who has no idea how…
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Who Needs Food, Anyway?
If you’re feeling fed up with recent political events, here’s one more straw to place very gently on your camel’s back. (If you need a break from outrage instead, here are some puppies.) Instead of offering its employees a living wage,…
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Mavis Gallant and Monsieur Le Verbe
Alors, Mademoiselle, have you noticed how we French, unlike our Anglo-Saxon friends, use all the muscles in our face and mouth when speaking? Raise your upper lip toward your nose. When performed correctly, this action will cause the nostrils to…
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Down with Women’s Stories, Up with Stories about Women
I am not tired of stories about women’s lives, stories that tell me something real about how a particular woman thinks or works or loves. But I am tired of “women’s stories,” stories that are supposed to be about a…
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2013 PEN Award Shortlists
PEN America has released the shortlists for its 2013 prizes, which you can check out here. There are ten prizes in categories ranging from debut fiction to literary science writing to biography (for which Rumpus columnist Peter Orner was a…
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Last City I Loved:…Fresno?
At Poets & Writers, Michael Medrano shows some love for a California city usually forgotten by the West Coast literary establishment: Fresno. Fresno’s Tower District, he writes, …lies just east of the infamous Highway 99, another valley literary icon mentioned by Philip…
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These Words All Have Neoflects Coming Off Them
Did you know that, like aglets for the end of a shoelace or tittle for the dot atop an i, there’s a whole delightful host of terms for the visual cues used in comic strips? Invented chiefly by cartoonist Mort Walker in a…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Brilliant Take on the Zimmerman Verdict
Not to overload anyone on political coverage, but Ta-Nehisi Coates’s reaction to the George Zimmerman trial is an absolute must-read. In it, he looks at the actual legal text involved in the case and points out that what’s so deeply frightening…
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Caine Prize Controversy Continues
Prominent Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sparked outrage in the African literary community last week with comments she made about the Caine Prize, a prestigious annual award for African writers. Adichie said many things in her fascinating, no-nonsense Boston Review interview…
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Mystery Solved: Galbraith is Actually Rowling
If you read Robert Galbraith’s debut novel, a detective thriller called The Cuckoo’s Clock, and thought it was remarkably well constructed for a first-timer, you weren’t alone. Nor were you incorrect: the actual author has been revealed to be J. K.…
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The Secret Songs of Plants
Sometime in 2011, Bartholomäus Traubeck noticed a certain similarity between tree rings and grooves on a vinyl record. Being a multimedia artist, he rigged up a turntable that could play cross-sections of trees like albums, transmitting the data from the…
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Staving-off-Despair Roundup
When there’s an injustice as great a man walking free after killing an unarmed teenager, at least we have writing to turn to. Our essays editor Roxane Gay has done some of that writing for Salon in a piece about the George…