Posts by author
Olivia Wetzel
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Saving Trees
For The Stranger, Rich Smith reviews Even Though the Whole World Is Burning, the film about poet W.S. Merwin and his life as a conservationist in Hawaii: The film glorifies Merwin as a giver of life, a distinction that invites an…
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A Narrative to Relate To
At Guernica, Elizabeth Karp-Evans interviews John Freeman, the founder of the literary journal Freeman’s, on freelancing, his goals for Freeman’s, and cultivating narratives: Narratives are individual; after that they become myths because you need to abstract a narrative to make it…
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Q&A with Sara Majka
Author Sara Majka answers questions for City Lights Booksellers about not being a writer, the first book she finished reading as a child, and the hypothetical soundtrack for her book: I have this strange fear that people are going to ask…
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Mansplained to Hell
Writers Dorthe Nors and Jarett Kobek discuss politics, Nors’s life in Denmark, writing on the Internet, women writers, and more over at Electric Literature: When you said that about a woman writing I Hate the Internet and ATTA, I felt…
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Necessity of Truth
Over at Book Riot, Hannah Engler discusses memoir, when the absolute truth is necessary, and why it is okay—even unavoidable—to fabricate facts: Fabrication is inherent in memoir writing. Number one, it’s impossible to have an unbiased view of your own life,…
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Harper Lee’s Life and Work
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, passed away on Friday. William Grimes remembers her life and work for the New York Times: Looking back on her childhood as a precocious tomboy, Scout, the narrator, evokes the sultry summers and simple pleasures…
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Little Theaters of Heat
Christopher Frizzelle shares a dazzling review of Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, What Belongs to You, praising its ferocity and intense exploration of homosexuality: These “little theaters of heat,” these packets of desire or panic or imminence, these doublings-down of doubt and upswellings…
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Death and Politics
John Williams inspects the literary themes of love and death, and, in the same article, suggests a few reads as we enter the presidential primaries: Even readers less snarky than Wilde can be forgiven if fictional expirations meet with less…
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Work and Play
Sixteen female authors tell Susie Schnall about their experiences and struggles with work-life balance, and offer some wonderful advice to us all: I think it’s unrealistic to max out in every area of your life simultaneously—there’s just not time for everything.…
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John’s Pixie Dream Girls
Mary Jo Tewes Cramb discusses the perpetuation of the “manic pixie dream girl” stereotype in John Green’s novels: In Green’s novels, there is considerable tension between the potent appeal of his manic pixie characters, the excitement and fun they bring into…
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The Purpose of Punctuation
Artist Nicholas Rougeux focuses on the punctuation of famous works by removing all of the letters in a text and arranging the punctuation in a spiral around a central image. Rougeux speaks on the purpose of his work: Rougeux doesn’t…
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Remembering In Cold Blood
To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, David Hayes and Sarah Weinman discuss what makes the book, as well as Capote’s other works, so remarkable: For centuries we’ve been enraptured and revolted, thrilled…