The (Old) New Leader
In January 2006, The New Leader stopped print publication, an early omen to The Christian Science Monitor. But this eighty-five-year old magazine continues to publish bimonthly in the form of…
Posts by author
M. Rebekah Otto
67 posts
M. Rebekah Otto lives in Berkeley, CA. She grew up in Chicago. Her current interests include her new nine-to-five, vintage wallpaper, and Evan S. Connell. Also, she's the former Books Editor of the Rumpus.
Font Factor
Helvetica, a 2007 film, looks at the history of this now-ubiquitous font, from its classical modernist roots in 1957 Switzerland to contemporary American billboards. Originally designed to be neutral, fonts…
People Reading
This blog captures People Reading as an on-going testament to the fact that people still read. They read Focault, Michael Crichton, Emily Dickinson; they read in Spanish and in Russian;…
Jonny Olsen: Laotian Pop Star
When Jonny Olsen, from Southern California, first went to Thailand, he stumbled on a plastic toy khaen, the native instrument that sounds like part harmonica, part reedy accordion. Well, the…
Skateboarding Writers
McSweeney’s interviews skateboarding pro turned writer, Bret Anthony Johnston, who has written about skateboarding and school for The New York Times. He is now the director of the creative writing…
Things I’ve Been Silent About
Azar Nafisi‘s first book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, chronicles an underground book club reading Western Classics under the oppressive Islamic government of Tehran (it subsequently became a favorite book-club book…
John Updike
In literature there are many figures but few icons. John Updike published over 50 books which dug through the depths of suburban American lives, particularly our sex lives, once comparing…