Hazlitt

  • Self-Love Stew

    In 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…

  • Celebrating the Legacy of Valley of the Dolls

    One 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,…

  • Sontag Syndrome

    Over at Hazlitt, Alana Massey walks us through the anxiety that so often accompanies reading great thinkers, laying bare her own insecurities at the altar of famed writer and critic, Susan Sontag. When she finally does sit down to read…

  • Lines between Genres

    At Hazlitt, Tobias Carroll writes on the current state of science fiction and fantasy, with recent works in both genres borrowing from the other to expand the limits of their worlds.

  • Reading Virginia Woolf Again

    January 25 marked Virginia Woolf’s 134th birthday. Rachel Vorona Cote has this remembrance for Hazlitt: If we regard ourselves as the protagonists of our own lives, then we must, to live empathically, remember that we are not singular in our possession of…

  • City and Sustenance

    At Hazlitt, novelist Orhan Pamuk discusses the influence of food and food vendors on his latest work, the ritual of drinking boza, and the inspiration that the city of Istanbul provides: I walk in the city all the time. It’s…

  • On Writing While in Prison

    Over at Hazlitt, Sarah Gerard interviews Matthew Seger, who is currently incarcerated in a maximum security prison, and reveals what it’s like to keep up a writing discipline behind bars: Before, if I wanted to write something down, I’d scribble…

  • Margaret and the No Good, Very Bad Prison

    We know some of the things we desire are probably not what we should do. That’s what makes drama interesting. Anshuman Iddamsetty sat down with Margaret Atwood to talk about her new book, The Heart Goes Last, and the conversation includes…

  • Reinventing Myth and Genre for Fiction

    Fables and fairy tales and folk tales can compel us on their own, but they’re also ripe for reinvention. Some authors may take the skeleton of a centuries-old story and use it as the basis for something new; others may…

  • The Ghostly Power of Mirrors

    Colin Dickey writes for Hazlitt about the practice of covering mirrors after a death: There seems to be no universal reason behind the custom. Reginald Fleming Johnston, documenting this practice in China in 1910, claimed that the reason mirrors are…

  • Out Like a Lion: Kathy Acker’s Last Hours

    Her genre-defying fiction, from the mail-art chapbook The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula to incendiary novels ­like Blood and Guts in High Schooland Empire of the Senseless, were ways to think against every repression, to overturn the worlds—and words—of parents, gender, the academy,…

  • It’s Okay that You Haven’t Read Finnegans Wake (Really)

    Over at Hazlitt, Sarah Galo and Elon Green have cornered a handful of authors, from Renata Adler to Celeste Ng, into admitting their literary gaps, from Finnegans Wake to To Kill a Mockingbird. Something we should keep in mind is that…