Posts by author
Mary Allen
-
The Whiteness of Literary Events
It’s daunting knowing that you will be the only one of your kind at some of these events. When you’ve been made to feel your otherness so concretely in the past, it’s hard not to notice it. I can’t help…
-
Poetry’s Love Affair with the Internet
We already knew that the Internet is a wild and wonderful place for poets, but the web is also empowering verse offline. The New York Times reports on how the Internet is vaulting poetry onto the bestseller list, and we…
-
Books for Pennies
Are the stories on pages of the books we love actually worth something in a monetary sense? If you ask sellers of bargain books, they may tell you those books are worth only cents on the dollar. Join the race…
-
Digital World, Digital Library
Why do we need physical libraries in the age of Wikipedia? What does a library look like in the digital age? The New York Review of Books explains how librarians are embracing technology.
-
I’m Sorry, Who?
One of the things I run into surprisingly often is people saying to me, ‘I’ve never heard of you before’… Yet I’ve been publishing in ‘mainstream’ journals and my book won [the Pulitzer] prize, so what is it that is…
-
The Power of the Ellipses
The Guardian presents a history of this tantalizing punctuation. They’re irresistible…
-
Scarf as Signifier
In honor of the upcoming centennial birthday of French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes, Hermés is releasing a limited-edition scarf designed in his honor. The New Yorker will gladly demystify that commodity for you.
-
For the Love of Weird Women
Weird Fiction Review finds us some weird fiction written by women we all should be reading.
-
The Freedom of Fiction
Literature may be weak because it has no real power in the world, but in a way it is the grandest narrative of all, in that it puts ourselves into question with fiction. We challenge ourselves and refuse to take…
-
You Don’t Mess with Shakespeare
Shakespeare is about the intoxicating richness of the language… It’s like the beer I drink. I drink 8.2 per cent I.P.A., and by changing the language in this modernizing way, it’s basically shifting to Bud Light. Bud Light’s acceptable, but…
-
Write What You Don’t Know
If we only write what we know, when do we get to use our imaginations? The Millions explores the art of writing things we don’t know.