Gandolf Would Not Imbibe Pumpkin Spice
According to Pobst, who worked on the Xbox version of 2002′s The Fellowship of the Ring adventure game, initially there were going to be pumpkin patches in the Shire and…
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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.
Part of the Journey
The New Inquiry interviewed Okwiri Oduor, winner of the Caine Prize. She says about past stories: I think they’re the kind of stories that would be published in an anthology…
Weekly Geekery
Smart phones are tracking your perfect student. The important warnings of sci-fi’s dystopian tales. Because you are interested in the Loch Ness monster. Online rumors and lies and the science…
Fiction is Threatening
Hilary Mantel wrote a story imagining the death of Margaret Thatcher. Predictably, people went nuts. Luckily The Daily Mail was on hand to remind us all of the real values…
Batman Saves More than Gotham
What does it take to transcend your medium into the stuff of literary value? Batman. 1986, the year both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were first published, can be…
The Ugly Side
At The Toast, Caitlin Keefe Moran writes about the difficult women in the long-forgotten work of Nancy Hale: The Prodigal Women, now sadly out of print, is a strange, giant,…
Weekly Geekery
Requiem for a pigeon. Fiction meets reality in space. Our Lord and Savior, science fiction. The right to know vs. the right to be forgotten. The proliferation of nerd. How…
The Non-Fiction Dilemma
Ever wonder how to write about other people without getting sued? Well, here are some answers. Another flavor of invasion of privacy is called false light. Suppose you post a…
The Essayist Must…
Despite the horror and hopelessness (see below) that moves through the world, the essayist must have, even if it is well-buried under the most convincing costume of misanthropy, a deep…
Weekly Geekery
The most powerful imaginings of science fiction aren’t the technological devices. Insert Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind reference here. Despite the Internet, Millenials are out-reading you. You should feel…
Ladies Are Taking Over Crime
Laura Miller opines that male-authored crime novels are a bit too predictable. Instead… I’ve found instead that the crime novels I open with the keenest anticipation these days are almost…
Reading Incompetent
Are we right to be nostalgic for a time before the internet when we could just read? Katy Waldman, writing for Slate, wonders if we might be misremembering things. I also…