The Seductive Nature of Faith: Talking with Alex McElroy
Alex McElroy discusses their debut novel, THE ATMOSPHERIANS.
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Join NOW!Alex McElroy discusses their debut novel, THE ATMOSPHERIANS.
...moreRonit Plank discusses her new memoir, WHEN SHE COMES BACK.
...moreLauren Hough discusses her debut essay collection, LEAVING ISN’T THE HARDEST THING.
...moreI exist in a field of landmines, never quite sure when one will go off or why.
...moreMy dad, a psychiatrist, wants to write a sex book.
...moreI needed to reshape the definitions of words that were used against me.
...moreChelsea Bieker discusses her debut novel, GODSHOT.
...moreChelsea Bieker discusses her debut novel, GODSHOT.
...moreCreation begets death which begets more creation.
...moreR.O. Kwon discusses her debut novel, THE INCENDIARIES.
...moreIn 1979, my mother decided she wanted to join Bhagwan’s ashram in Pune, India.
...moreDanzy Senna discusses New People, inhabiting her characters without judging them, playing with the reality and surreality of identity, and pushing against traditional story arcs.
...moreI used to play a game with myself: who should die first, me or daddy? When I was very little, I could never come up with a good answer.
...moreJerald Walker discusses his memoir, The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult, the story of his childhood in The Worldwide Church of God, and how the act of writing delivered him from bitterness.
...moreCarolyn Parkhurst discusses her latest book, Harmony, writing about your personal life and family in fiction, and her fascination with cults.
...moreWhat’s interesting, of course, is how modern life could easily be seen in the opposite way—as an ever-expanding domain of individuality and self-expression.
...moreIn the first installment of our new column all about podcasts, we talk with Ross Blocher and Carrie Poppy of Oh No, Ross and Carrie!.
...more“Don’t become a professor,” he said. “I’d rather you become a garbage man. They get paid more and have better benefits.”
...moreWriter Fiona Maazel talks about her love for the “sad, lonely, self-loathing guy,” the appeal of cults, setting her latest novel in the wildly divergent worlds of North Korea and Cincinnati, and her current fascination with neuroprosthetics.
...moreSociologist Susan Palmer studies new religious movements—“cults,” as the rest of us might call them—not out of morbid fascination or a desire to catalog their evils, but because she considers them “beautiful life forms, mysterious and pulsating with charisma.” Of course, it’s a controversial line of work, and involves more than its fair share of […]
...moreIf reading our interview with Peter Rock (and getting psyched for his reading tomorrow) has whetted your appetite for cult stories, check out this piece on Synanon by George Pendle, highlighted by Longform earlier this week. Things start out all right, with a recovering alcoholic named Chuck Dederich meeting with some Alcoholics Anonymous pals for […]
...moreEllen Meeropol’s debut novel tackles bizarre cult rituals, political violence, drug abuse, infanticide, and the Klan.
...moreThis week in New York, Granta’s Sex Party, The Moth Mainstage presents Saints and Sinners, SLEIGH BELLS perform, Emily Gould celebrates her new memoir with a party, Sebastian Junger discusses his latest work, Chip Kidd, The Thing Quarterly presents issue 10 with Starlee Kine and Arthur Jones, Eteam in a group show Resurrectine and Jonathan […]
...more“That was my other big misconception. That if I got sober and went to a meeting they’d make me believe in God. Not true.”
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