Every Editors Nightmare
“The publisher functions more like an executive producer on a movie,” says the nonfiction author Susan Orlean. A New Yorker writer steeped in its culture of obsessive fact-checking, Orlean has…
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Lyz Lenz
351 posts
Lyz's writing has been published in the New York Times Motherlode, Jezebel, Aeon, Pacific Standard, and others. Her book on midwestern churches is forthcoming from Indiana University Press. She has her MFA from Lesley and skulks about on Twitter @lyzl. Lyz is a member of The Rumpus Advisory Board and a full-time staff writer for the Columbia Journalism Review.
Writing Under the Influence of Catholicism
William Giraldi talks about writing in spite of Catholicism: The Catholic O’Connor, in other words, has no Catholic agenda when she sits at the campfire to tell her story—across her singular canon…
Evil Loves Tomorrow
What I do know is that love reckons with the past and evil reminds us to look to the future. Evil loves tomorrow because peddling in possibility is what abusers…
Weekly Geekery
Twitter isn’t always toxic. The technology of the dinosaur epic. Score one for lady gamers. Can math solve questions of authorship? Toys are as creepy as you think.
The Art of the Shoe
Duality is deeply embedded in the elemental technology that separates our feet from the ground on which we tread. As a container for spiritual meaning, footwear is laden with wishes,…
Mat Johnson on Writing
In an interview with Tobias Carroll for Hazlitt magazine, Mat Johnson talks about writing, humor, and fantasy: But writing in general sometimes is like a dream. You might recognize things from your…
Weekly Geekery
Is the Hulk going to own Gawker? What’s actually happening with Twitter? Don’t freak out, but cities lose art all the time. Does power corrupt? Or do institutions corrupt? Technology is…
Authors, Goodreads Isn’t for You
In response to a recent scuffle between a Goodreads reviewer and an author, BookRiot offers this advice to authors: But it’s not just the one-or-two-star reviews. I also don’t think…
Jeb Bush in English Class
When the Huffington Post revealed that Jeb Bush misinterpreted The Scarlet Letter in order to justify the public shaming of unwed mothers, the Internet imagined how he would interpret other classic…
In Memoriam: Headless Woman
Vincent Musetto, the author of the infamous New York Post headline, “Headless Woman in Topless Bar” died on June 9th. The New York Times has this obituary. The writers of…
Weekly Geekery
Klingon: Where intellectual property and language collide. One of us. One of us. One of us. One of us. One of us. Poverty is all in your head. Really. After this…
Intergenerational Cycle of Crap
Gabriel Roth has some hard truths about The Poky Little Puppy, and he’s not wrong. Millions of people enjoyed The Poky Little Puppy as children, because it was cheap and because, being…