Posts by author
Serena Candelaria
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Soil into Poetry
This is what writers do–we keep each other warm–during periods of solitude when we are writing. Henri Cole eulogizes his friend James Lord in a piece in The New Yorker, and takes a look at the power of writing to…
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Failure to Cope
“Millennials can’t grow up,” or so Brooke Donatone writes in an article that contemplates narcissism, depression, and the notion that “30 is the new 18.” Donatone considers factors that might be contributing to the postponement of adulthood: longer life spans,…
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You Cannot Sleep
In 1994, Mikail Eldin was an arts journalist searching for a story. Five years later, he was a reporter who had survived firefights and brutal torture by Russian troops. He recounts his experiences in his memoir called The Sky Wept Fire. This…
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A Story Unfolds in the Marginalia
After finding a paperback novel strewn on an airport bench with the note: “To whomever finds this book—please read it, take it somewhere, and leave it for someone else to find it” written inside, J.J. Abrams became fascinated with the…
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Female Comedians: On Laughter and Stigma
Some reviewers still draw a divide between the rules that apply to male comedians and their female counterparts, as seen in in Brian Lowry’s piece which criticizes Sarah Silverman for being “as dirty as the guys.” Ann Friedman of The…
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The Power of Fiction
But what I loved most about Baldwin’s writing was that he didn’t make me feel, as a young white guy, that I had no right to be thriving on his work and taking it all so personally… I could see…
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“I Got My Birth Chart Read”
When asked about her decision to relocate to Bangkok, Jessica Mack, a women’s rights consultant hailing from the U.S.A. says, “In a nutshell, I’m in Bangkok because my life sort of fell apart…” After the end of a 7-year relationship,…
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Love at First Sight
It seems counterintuitive to say the least, but there were 100 takes filmed of the love-at-first-sight scene in Blue Is the Warmest Color, the French film that has garnered attention for its 10-minute lesbian sex scene, an epic length for…
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The OED in the Global Age
Revising the OED is no easy feat. Following a rare change in the dictionary’s leadership, Lorien Kite takes the opportunity to explore the implications of the most recent additions to the OED, the evolution of language, and the role of…
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Creativity Uninhibited in the Dark
“Great artists and original thinkers often seem instinctually drawn to the darker hours,” writes Eric Jaffe in his article “Why Creativity Thrives in the Dark.” A recent study conducted by Anna Steidel and Lioba Werth shows that there’s a reason…
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With Child in Mongolia
Writer Ariel Levy offers a heart-wrenching account of adventure and coming into motherhood in her essay called “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” featured in The New Yorker. People were alarmed when I told them where I was going, but I was pleased…
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Choosing to Look
Cris Mazza, author of nineteen books– including the soon-to-be-released Something Wrong with Her— writes about gender relations, sexuality, and society’s distorted perceptions of value. By her own assessment, Mazza has written herself into the question of whether skewed perceptions of…