Posts by author
Lauren O’Neal
-
Do You Really Want to “Do What You Love”?
Superficially, [“do what you love”] is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who…
-
A Pan-American Online Journal for Literary Hooligans
Hinchas de Poesía is an online literary magazine featuring poetry, prose, reviews, and art from across both Americas. (“Hinchas” are soccer hooligans, so the journal’s title evokes violently passionate poetry fans.) Mostly in English, Hinchas draws on talent from across two…
-
Murderer’s Murder Mystery Wins Prize
When the judges of a lucrative “debut-detective-novel writing contest” chose Alaric Hunt’s murder mystery Cuts Through Bone, they didn’t realize it was written in prison by an actual murderer. Click here to read a New York Times Magazine piece about Hunt’s crime,…
-
Green Branch Library to Branch Out with Bookmobile
The Green Branch Library has done amazing work providing books and other materials about social and environmental justice to kids in Oakland. Now they’re hoping to expand their reach to kids all over the Bay Area with a a bookmobile!…
-
Scary Stories for a New Generation
We haven’t stopped creating fairy tales and folklore—we just do it online now. For Aeon magazine, Will Wiles has a splendid longread about “creepypasta,” the phenomenon of writing and disseminating scary stories on the Internet. Their subject matter—horrific lost episodes…
-
“I Am an Alien”
Moving to the US as a person of color isn’t easy, even when you do everything completely above-board, come from a nation friendly with the US, and arrive with a respectable family in tow. Toni Nealie discusses her experience coming…
-
PJ Harvey Tuesday #8: “Who the Fuck?”
“Who the Fuck?” is an old-school Polly Jean temper tantrum with an acerbic guitar riff choked through cheap amps. Plus cussing.
-
“The Woes of the Wannabe”
The prospect of publication, the urgent need, as they see it, to publish as soon as possible, colors everything [my students] do….It will be hard for those who have never suffered this obsession to appreciate how all-conditioning and all-consuming it…
-
How to Scientifically Predict a Novel’s Success
It’s impossible to predict what will make a book sell well, but scientists at Stony Brook University think they might be on the right track. After conducting statistical analyses of novels from several genres, they were able to predict with…
-
Second Twitter Fiction Festival Approaches
Last year, we blogged about the first annual Twitter Fiction Festival after it happened. This year, we’re giving you a heads up: if you want to participate in this year’s festival, happening March 12–16, submit your idea to the organizers here.…
-
How Accurate Is Chang-Rae Lee’s New Novel?
Perhaps American sci-fi is made to tell immigrant stories. And maybe there’s a reason why, during a 24-hour travel back to Taipei, I felt welcomed home by the collective voice of B-more. Kevin Tang’s review of Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a…
-
The Lowdown on Queer Feminist Comics
“Sexuality is more than gay and straight, and probably even more than LGBTQIA. Comics are here to help.” So read the delightful subhed for Greg Baldino’s LARB review of two anthologies of comics about gender and sexuality. The books are The Big…