Posts by author
Olivia Wetzel
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Just Kidding
Heads up, Harry Potter fans: the staff over at VICE confirm that J.K. Rowling will be coming out with three more short stories about Hogwarts. The stories will provide background to some of the secondary characters in the Harry Potter series:…
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The Clinton Reading List
For Mother Jones, Jenny Luna notes the top four books on the current New York Times bestseller list: all books written by conservative writers speaking against Hillary Clinton: As seen with the success of Mitt Romney’s 2010 book, No Apology, sales don’t…
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Ambiguous Understanding
Author of The Black History of the White House Clarence Lusane addresses Michelle Obama’s statements at the 2016 DNC about the role of slave labor in the construction of the White House: I think [George Washington] always had an ambiguous understanding in relationship…
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Piles of Castoffs
For Signature, Rita Jacobs reflects on the importance and the role of Anne Frank’s diary, 72 years after it was written. She puts two recent works, Nathan Englander’s short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank,” and…
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The World’s Nicest Dad
Sara Benincasa‘s latest book, Tim Kaine Is Your Nice Dad, has made its way onto the bestseller lists on Amazon and Kindle since its electronic release on Friday. The 26-page book, a parody of Tim Kaine as “the world’s nicest dad,” was…
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Franchise Exploitation
Harry Potter fans are celebrating the release of J.K Rowling’s newest work, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the eighth installment in the Harry Potter series. However, unlike the other novels in the series, Cursed Child is the script of…
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Writing for All
At The Stranger, Rich Smith describes the Till Writer’s Residency program at Smoke Farm in Arlington, Washington. Unlike most residency programs, which are expensive and require writers to pay for travel, the Till Residency is affordable and aims to provide a…
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Appropriation without Acknowledgement
At Electric Literature, an anonymous writer shares her personal experience with a creative writing classmate who plagiarized other poets. The writer poses the question of when writing crosses the boundary between respectful mimicry and plagiarism: When have I changed [a poem] enough that…
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A Spirit of Rebellion
Maddie Crum interviews Jacques Ferrandez, who adapted Albert Camus’s classic The Stranger into a graphic novel, on the importance of The Stranger, his personal connection to it, and more: The book is about the human condition and also about youth.…
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Mercury Plummeting
For the New York Times, Marisa Silver reviews Jenni Fagan’s new novel, The Sunlight Pilgrims, which takes place in a scarily plausible world in which ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the average temperature is well below 0…
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Where Writers Rule
At Slate, Laura Miller discusses the TV showrunner as novelist, focusing specifically on Noah Hawley. Hawley, showrunner for the FX show Fargo, has also published multiple novels, including Before the Fall: By contrast, the flawed, struggling, conflicted male characters in both…
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Writing a False Novel
I think once something is right, I know to leave it alone. It isn’t like I rewrite sentences. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t know what to say, really. That’s probably true. I guess when the words aren’t coming…