Posts by author
P.E. Garcia
-
Austen Family Letters
The LA Times reports that unpublished letters and poems from Jane Austen’s family have been acquired by the Huntington Library. While none of the letters are from Jane Austen herself, the correspondence will still “provide valuable insight into Jane Austen…
-
Europe’s First Taste of Chocolate
And what do we make of chocolate? Are you not afraid that it will burn your blood? Could it be that these miraculous effects mask some kind of inferno [in the body]? The Public Domain Review examines 17th century texts…
-
The Birth of Gastronomic Poetry
Both Mark and I had noticed at poetry readings that whenever food was mentioned in a poem—and that didn’t happen very often—blissful smiles would break out on the faces of people in the audience. Thus, we reasoned, in a country…
-
Fresh Breath in the Afterlife
Dear Emily, For you— Some altoids—breathe Peacefully— And mintily— Nancy McCabein visits the graves of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Emily Dickinson (where her friend left some breath mints) for the Ploughshares blog.
-
Laughing Again After Charlie Hebdo
While the firemen were carrying me on a wheeled office chair out of the conference room, I found myself floating over the bodies of my dead colleagues, Bernard, Tignous, Cabu, Georges, bodies that my rescuers were stepping over or around,…
-
The Games Writers Play
The Guardian looks at the different games writers play to take their minds off of their work, including chess, poker, and Minecraft.
-
The First (Not-So-Great) American Novel
He dearly yearns for Harriot as his mistress: “Shall we not,” he asks her, “obey the dictates of nature, rather than confine ourselves to the forced, unnatural rules of—and—and shall the halcyon days of youth slip through our fingers unenjoyed?”…
-
Branding Books
Even after spending so much time, effort and money on getting the dust jacket just right, most publishers go back to the drawing board to design the paperback version. That always seems to me like a waste of hard-won brand…
-
Sci-Fi is the New Religion
We’re only a few centuries and a small apocalyptic event away from isolated communities of huddled believers worshipping the gospels of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Le Guin….Let’s not think about L Ron Hubbard. In the Guardian, Damien Walter argues that…
-
Shots in the Dark
For The American Reader, Adrian Van Young examines the pervasiveness of gun violence in fiction and how it relates to the brutality of the real world.
-
Making the Latino Renaissance More Radical
This is the difference between U.S. Latina/o letters and Latina/o Letters from Latin America: In the United States, writing is a business. In Latin America, writing is life and death. At the Ploughshares blog, Daniel Peña argues that Latina/o fiction in…
-
Drawing While the Hand Trembles
When Egyptian cartoonists offer condolences to their Parisian counterparts, they are doing so with an appreciation of the daily risks of the art form — making a joke about the assassinations remains difficult or superficial. Foreign Policy looks at the…