This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreA weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...more“There may be freedom in America but it is not for me.” At Catapult, Kenechi Uzor reminds us that not every immigrant story is an uncomplicated, happy one. Mallika Rao writes for the Atlantic on the the beloved web series Brown Girls, its coming leap to HBO, and the promise of more complex narratives for people of […]
...moreSarah Gerard’s dazzling second book, Sunshine State, is a collection of essays interlacing narrative nonfiction and personal essay. The thirty-one year old Brooklynite teaches nonfiction and writes a monthly column for Hazlitt. She has received rave reviews from the New York Times, NPR, and The Millions. Using her home state of Florida as the medium to navigate […]
...moreFor Huffington Post’s Highline magazine, Jason Fagone profiles a trauma surgeon working to make a small dent in our country’s problem with gun violence. At Catapult, Abbey Fenbert writes a funny, heartfelt essay about trying to ban books in the seventh grade.
...moreFor Lidia Yuknavitch, the personal is unavoidably political in this piece for Electric Literature. At Catapult, David Frey writes with moving realness on what it is like to watch a parent age and transition into assisted living. Jenessa Abrams looks at the nuances of mental illness and the damage of a word like “crazy” here at The Rumpus.
...moreAt Catapult, Toni Jensen writes a mesmerizing narrative of documenting assault and human trafficking intermixed with her experiences at Standing Rock and facing threats of violence. At Hazlitt, Aparita Bhandari examines goddess figures and the ways that within current belief systems such figures can be both problematic and reassuring.
...moreBookbinding may be a dying art, but at Lit Hub, Dwyer Murphy tells the story of a man who keeps his business going strong on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For Hazlitt, Suzannah Showler takes a measured look at the prepper community and at the idea of preparation itself.
...moreAt Lit Hub, Jonathan Reiber, a former speechwriter for the Obama administration, weighs our souls and our words during this political transition. Chivas Sandage writes for The Rumpus about helping the men in our lives to fully understand the constant state of vigilance women live in. On Medium, Abbie VanSickle takes a thoughtful, personal look at the […]
...moreWith a deep understanding of colonizing narratives, Emma Bracy at Hazlitt assembles historical and personal snapshots to form a record of the ongoing dehumanizations that have led to this continuing moment of white violence against black and brown peoples: My grandfather’s contributions to aeronautics had a permanent impact on the science and practice of human-powered […]
...moreFor Hazlitt, Hugh Ryan attempts to document the many personas of mid-1900s drag performer Malvina Schwartz, bringing color to the landmarks and styles of a queer world that sometimes threatens to be forgotten. Ultimately his work illustrates the piecemeal nature of queer historiography and the intermittently rewarding and disheartening detective work of pursuing these stories: […]
...moreFor Hazlitt, Steven Price writes a beautiful elegy to his former editor, Ellen Seligman. Seligman and Price collaborated on Price’s By Gaslight, published in August, five months after Seligman’s passing. Editing, at its highest level, is surely a creative act. I don’t know that Ellen would have used such language; she told me once that […]
...moreWhenever I finish a book and I get to the last day of writing the first draft and I only have two pages to go, I put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation. That’s my ritual. Whenever I put those albums on back to back, I know I’m in the home stretch. Over at Hazlitt, […]
...moreOver at Hazlitt, Morgan Jerkins unpacks our collective literary fascination with white suburban boredom, connecting the historical dots between these dry developments and the redlining that created them, while also highlighting the fact that the at root of boredom is stability and prosperity: According to Martha R. Mahoney of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, […]
...moreTake a stroll through the storybook town of Great Missenden, a tiny village in the county of Buckinghamshire in Britain, and the home of children’s literature’s grand-wizard, Roald Dahl, in the latter half of his life. For Hazlitt, Michael Hingston tours Great Missenden and reflects on the similarities between the little town and the settings […]
...moreI feel like everything shouldn’t exist. I think the way I manage is that I try to think of everything as disposable. I have no interest in posterity. Chris Randle interviews author and artist Hannah Black for Hazlitt in the wake of her newly published book, Dark Pool Party, and discusses the unknown realm between […]
...moreOver at Hazlitt, Tobias Carroll writes about the intersection of punk and magic in various fictional works, from The Insides by Jeremy P. Bushnell to the Hellblazer comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—a surprisingly varied history of what might, at first, seem like a pairing that just shouldn’t work, but does, deliciously.
...moreNot only are these characters destined to die in the cautionary tales and to endure marriages to self-congratulatory men in the redemptions tales, they don’t even have anyone to miss them when they succumb to these fates At Hazlitt, Alana Massey writes about the baseless trope in films of the depraved and friendless female sex […]
...moreTim Falconer writes for Hazlitt on the psychological importance of failure: When you do what you’re good at exclusively, avoiding what you are bad at, you live in an evaluative world, one that’s full of judgement…. The danger is this becomes an inauthentic world, one that you don’t engage in for its own sake and […]
...morewhen I worked for him I understood what kind of architect I wanted to be. He’s a very humane and generous person, and I understood that I didn’t want to do commercial architecture. I wanted to do projects that have a soul and a history, and even if they are new, they have an innovative […]
...moreWith a flair for the both the juiciest and most humanizing parts of the story, Soraya Roberts over at Hazlitt pens a sweeping indictment of/love letter to John Hughes: Thirty years on, however, we’ve dropped the rose-coloured glasses, and our response to realizing he sold us out to suburbia echoes Molly Ringwald’s response in Vanity […]
...moreWherever the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, Geoff Dyer has long since crossed it. For Hazlitt, Kyle Chayka talked to the author of White Sands about the continuum of the critical and the narrative: If people call it an essay collection, then I immediately want to say, hey, but there are stories as well!
...moreIt’s in the new black sign arching over the entrance that says, ‘Never stop dreaming.’ A harmless cliché, but once you know the history of the place, it reads like a memo to the bodies once buried below. Never stop dreaming. Please, don’t let anyone disturb you from your eternal sleep. For Hazlitt, Elizabeth Harper […]
...moreFor Hazlitt, Lauren Mitchell interviews Mona Awad about her book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, and together they attest to the unhappiness and emotional energy that society demands of fat women, and the toll it takes on a body and a mind: It is hard, it’s like, can we step outside of […]
...moreIn her essay at Hazlitt, “Watch Me Bathe,” Jess Carroll shares that she barely bathes, and tells us that it’s for the better—in fact, it’s like reverse self-love and self-care, as we’ve come to think of those terms now. She rejects the idea that mental health is balanced on a teetering tower of meticulous hygiene routines, […]
...moreOne of the most well-known novels that has spawned its own cult following, Valley of the Dolls immortalized tales of women struggling with marriage, drug addiction, and class and sparked lively discussion across the country. Over at Hazlitt, Manisha Aggarwal-Schifelitte, Amber Katz, Sarah Nicole Prickett, and Kiva Reardon discuss its inspiring and relevant legacy even […]
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