letter writing
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Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter
Science of Us explains why it felt so great to write that angry letter to your boss (even if you never sent it): When we talk with someone with whom we don’t feel completely safe, our social editor jumps in on…
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The Rumpus Interview with Julie Schumacher
Julie Schumacher discusses going extinct, iPads and iPhones, epistolary novels, and why the number of MFA programs in the U.S. is a non-issue.
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Simply and Swiftly
In 1906, aged 21, D.H. Lawrence wrote to his future fiancée Louise Burrows with writing advice after reading an essay on art she’d sent to him. Among many other remarkable lines, the British author told Burrows that “[l]ike most girl…
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E-Remorse and Writers
Most literate adults can tell e-disaster stories: information sent to the wrong recipient or group, or discovered by the wrong person, or issued in careless wording that gave offense, or did real damage. Some of these stories are funny. Some…
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Dear Son or Daughter
Here is the problem in writing letters to your kids—perhaps especially as a writer, who has arguably spent her entire professional life writing letters to everyone who isn’t her kids: How do you suddenly start writing in a grand literary…
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Friends Indeed
It turns out that French poet Charles Baudelaire wasn’t very fond of his compatriot Victor Hugo. Despite having the novelist’s support when prosecuted after publishing Les Fleurs du Mal, the poet may have secretly despised (or perhaps just envied) Hugo—in a…
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Darwin’s Penpal
The Public Domain Review flips through Darwin’s unusual photo collection and his correspondence with neurologist James Crichton-Browne. The correspondence between Darwin and Crichton-Browne led Darwin to write The Expression of Emotions of Man and Animals. Darwin found Crichton-Browne’s help so…
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Strangling Yourself While Trying To Sing
Over at Maud Newton’s website—a letter, to you, on old family letters. Dusty old leaves from the early 1900s, excavated from here or there. Grandpa’s love triangle. An apology from the sanitarium in which Aunt Louise died. There’s magic in…
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Eulogy for the Love Letter
Paper notes and postcards have all but joined rotary phones and singing telegrams in the history books of communication. Email and text messages might have the advantage of speed (and sometimes playful naughtiness), but neither can compensate for the tangible…
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Post Haste
Fellow Letters in the Mail enthusiasts, take note of this forthcoming exhibit devoted to the USPS as a public service. The multi-media exhibition, Post Haste, will grace Oakland’s MacArthur B Arthur Gallery from May 4 to 28. “Post Haste is,…