Posts by author
Serena Candelaria
-
The Power to Transform
“Women are more likely than men to change form and style,” or so Stacey D’Erasmo writes in this New Yorker piece. Female artists tend to transform their work over the course of their careers, while male artists are more likely to…
-
A Great Escape
I came from, not a small town, but basically not a very interesting place…So it was very important for me not to rebel but simply to get away, to go away. Travel writing doesn’t have to be lackluster. It can…
-
Wanting to be Wanted
The girls described in Emma Cline’s essay “See Me” are hopelessly lost in their shared desire to be noticed. Cline begins her essay by reflecting on her own adolescence experience of corresponding with a middle-aged man who promised to cast her…
-
Wired in for Life
…the unplugging movement is the latest incarnation of an ageless effort to escape the everyday, to retreat from the hustle and bustle of life in search of its still core. Phones, computers, and tablets, once seen as a way of…
-
Absent Characters
People of color have been largely excluded from children’s literature. Of the 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, only 93 featured black characters. In his essay, “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature,” Christopher Myers speaks out against the trend of allowing…
-
Break the Rules
You’ve heard the rules of writing before. You probably know them well enough to recite “a litany as deeply embedded as the Lord’s Prayer.” Show, don’t tell. Write what you know. The first sentence is key. The last sentence is…
-
The Culture of The SAT
Elizabeth Kolbert began to study for the SAT and found that achieving a perfect score is much more difficult than she could have anticipated. She reported that her “anxiety level was soaring.” As the year went on, she “started to…
-
Which Fictional Characters Do You Love?
You might have noticed the recent trend of character personality quizzes filling up your social media newsfeeds. These quizzes promise to let you know which character you are most like, making it seem as if we read and watch television…
-
You’ve Told Your Worst Secret
Gordon Lish, acclaimed writer, editor, and teacher, is renowned for giving fiction writers the following advice: tell your worst secret. Lish encourages writers to put themselves at risk, first making themselves emotionally vulnerable, and then restoring themselves. Through dramatized confessions,…
-
Writing on Trains
“Why do writers find the train such a fruitful work environment?” This is the question Jessica Gross sets out to answer in a recent piece published by The Paris Review, in which she describes her experience on a train to Chicago.…
-
Are Science and Literature at Odds?
What role can a knowledge of scientific concepts play in understanding literature? It comes as no surprise that “biological science remains more-or-less completely un-talked about in English seminar,” as M.M. Owen writes in a piece featured on The Millions, but…
-
I Know Death Too Well By Now
In a breathtaking essay on aging, Roger Angell reflects on death. At the age of 93, he writes: “A weariness about death exists in me and in us all in another way, as well, though we scarcely notice it.” Angell has…