Posts by author

Lyz Lenz

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.

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Lyz Lenz

Jan 12, 2016

Weekly Geekery

The hegemony of email. The mermaid who is saving the ocean. Uranium cures. Everyone who writes online has been told page views matter—except they don’t. Teaching fairness.
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Lyz Lenz

Jan 7, 2016

Pageantry and Water Sports

I had come in search of the meaning of synchronized swimming in modern America. Over the course of a week, I had gotten bored with the human body’s physical excellence. Maybe that was because, despite the spectacle at this level,…
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Lyz Lenz

Jan 7, 2016

Reviewing the Literary Review

The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the Los Angeles Review of Book‘s new model for the literary review: LARB beckons a new model of a literary review, not tied to a newspaper or based in a university but creating its…
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Lyz Lenz

Jan 5, 2016

Weekly Geekery

Science fiction says more about the present than the future. The realities of virtual reality. Google takes on the quest for the fountain of youth. Use the power of the force—the linguistic force. The anatomy of a lie.
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 29, 2015

Weekly Geekery

Computers know images better than you. Is virtual reality better than books? Stop calling it science fiction. Raising the minimum age of social media. Star Wars and predictable stories.
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 29, 2015

The Value of a Face

Rachel Vorona Cote writes about how people use beauty to undermine the words of women: I understood, as I continue to understand with distressing nuance, that too many men navigate the terror of women’s brilliance by reducing them to skin…
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 22, 2015

Weekly Geekery

The long dark history of socialist utopias. Get all the gadgets! Netflix binges are ruining the environment. Internet hate speech law.
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 17, 2015

Celebrating Donuts

At the Paris Review Daily, Sadie Stein writes a reflection on Mayflower donuts and optimism: Usually, seeing records of defunct restaurants fills me with melancholy. Each one looks so perfect, so glamorous, so wholesome, so wholly desirable. And yet Mayflower Donuts,…
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 17, 2015

Photographing Crime

It’s a paradox that many of the show’s images are strangely striking even if the crimes they represent are horrifying. Joseph Stalin had at least 750,000 executed between 1937 and 1938. A photographer made a portrait before each execution, shooting…
Features & Reviews, Interviews, Rumpus Original

Lyz Lenz

Dec 16, 2015

The Rumpus Interview with Laurie Foos

Laurie Foos discusses her latest novel, The Blue Girl, feminism, Michael Jackson, and mythical moon pies.
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 15, 2015

Weekly Geekery

Why is Dr. Seuss funny? Science knows. Stanford has a digital humanities major. So, that’s a thing now. Dominating the translation business. These youths are really famous on the Internet.
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Lyz Lenz

Dec 10, 2015

Non-British People Pick the Most British Novel

The BBC asked a bunch of non-British people to pick the 100 best British novels of all time and they came up with this. Spoiler alert: Middlemarch is number one.