Posts by author
Roxie Pell
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The End of the Tour
As if reading weren’t a solitary enough activity, one of the last remaining sources of human contact between writers and readers is on the wane. For Electric Literature, Keith Lee Morris laments the decline of the IRL interface: I’d never…
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Who Are You Writing For?
In the American imagination the black woman, whether light skinned or dark, is already a sexualized entity, a character upon which so many stereotypes are projected. But as a black woman writing these characters, I need to write beyond the…
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Old Friends
Upbeat YA protagonists are a far cry from the tortured figures we’re used to watching on television. Flavorwire’s Sarah Seltzer makes her predictions for Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables’s forthcoming return to the small screen: Two iconic characters with…
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Her Universe
Sci-fi has a women problem. The New York Times spoke to fangirl-turned-publisher Ashley Eckstein about making room in the conversation: “Liking Star Wars is not a trend; it’s part of who you are,” she said, adding that she was disturbed to…
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Still Alive
Far from dying out, short stories have become more popular over the last five years. For the New York Times, Paris Review editor Lorin Stein articulates the value of literary solitude in a public world: You can’t be worrying how…
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Making Space
Books by white dudes are so inescapable that some readers have taken to (temporarily) swearing off their work. Jezebel’s Jia Tolentino considers whether those efforts are misguided: We know that white male writers take up too much literary attention; the solution…
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Pace Yourself
Spoilerphobes worldwide had their greatest fears realized last Saturday when George R.R. Martin announced via blog post that The Winds of Winter, the next installment in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, was not finished in time for…
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I Would Have Done That. Instead.
For most readers, Infinite Jest is or was a formidable challenge looming in the future or receding in the past. But in the shadow of greater obstacles, it makes a decent distraction: I was the same depressed, anxious woman I…
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Imagine That
Like every other year, in 2015 we wrestled with the knowledge of our constructed selves. But rather than eschew personhood as a postmodernist might, we considered just who we’ve been inventing: What do you write about when you no longer…
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For Everybody
…you ask them, ‘Why are you so upset?’, and they can’t answer you. For the New Yorker, Adrienne Raphael talks to linguist David Crystal about our age of abbreviation.
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Blending the High with the Low
Star Wars is a Western. Star Wars is a samurai movie. Star Wars isa space opera. Star Wars is a war film. Star Wars is a fairy tale. Slate‘s Forrest Wickman argues that George Lucas’s serial masterpiece isn’t just underrated—it’s completely misunderstood.
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Getting There
Success in the literary world often demands money in the real world. For Lit Hub, Lorraine Berry calls out the system that excludes working class voices from the conversation: How much more dedication did one need to prove beyond that?…