Other
-
The End of a World as We Know It
My obsession with Pluto began when my six-year-old daughter asked how many planets there were. Nine. Nine! Nine? There had always been nine, and I couldn’t bring myself to say “eight.”
-
Happy Independence Day!
We’ll be taking it easy around here today, but we hope you’ll find some time to read Roxane Gay’s excellent interview with Terry Tempest Williams. The discussion, which touches on democracy, community, and intimacy with the land, will give you lots to…
-
Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
We’ll be laying low for the Holiday. Morning Coffee will be back next Monday. Happy Birthday America.
-
From Manic Pixie Dream Girl to Stable Banshee Real Woman
“I’m fascinated by this character and what she means to people,” writes Laurie Penny about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, “because the experience of being her—of playing her—is so wildly different than it seems to appear from the outside.”…
-
McSweeney’s McMullens, Lost Sloth, and J. Otto Seibold
McSweeney’s McMullens has published a new picture book for kids—Lost Sloth by J. Otto Seibold—and they want to celebrate! Join them on Sunday, July 14th, at the Lost Sloth Pop-Up Kids’ Book Shop at 849 Valencia for family-friendly fun and…
-
Raise Your Glass to The Toast
Here’s a new website you’ll definitely want to add to your favorite Google Reader substitute. The Toast, started by Hairpin alums Nicole Cliffe and Mallory Ortberg, is “a daily blog that publishes features on everything from literary characters that never…
-
Making Gertrude Stein and Opera Cool Again
“It would be my dream if people were just, like, rapping Gertrude Stein in New York,” says director Michelle Sutherland in the Kickstarter video for her genre-busting show Gertrude Stein SAINTS! The opera—if that term even still applies to such a…
-
I’ll Not Yield At This Time
It was an experience unlike any I’ve had—a moment when my voice and my body made a real, physical difference for something I believed in. It was electrifying and beautiful and visceral and sad, and, ultimately, successful. The bill didn’t…
-
Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Perhaps you have wondered, how could the remnants of the cold war help us stop the illegal ivory trade? We’ve been bringing flowers to funerals for at least 13,000 years. Trekking across the Arctic looking for lost bones. On dragon’s…
-
Everything Is Terrible
…so here’s a video of a duck who has just received a new prosthetic foot. The duck, named Buttercup, was born with a backward-facing left foot, which was amputated and replaced with a peg leg. His quacks of confusion/joy when…
-
Tiny Screams and Other Deviations from Girl Power
The riot grrrl movement—and other “angry young women” making music around the same time—validated and celebrated female rage. But what if you feel less rage and more “negative but ultimately weak emotions that do not lead to action” like “envy,…
-
The Missouri Review Showing us Love!
The Missouri Review recently posted a quote on their Tumblr from our essay, “David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Cynicism Of Mark Edmundson, Or Poetry Is Still Not Dead:” I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there’s no cynicism here. American poetry is a…