The Guardian
-
On the Road for non “beatnik groupies”
Craving to be a ‘50s vagabond like Kerouac’s Sal Paradise but fear traveling without your GPS? On the Road fans worry need not worry! Gregor Weichbrodt has “rewritten” the entire novel solely using Google Maps driving directions. The open-source book…
-
Pussy Riot Members Freed from Prison and Pussy Riot
Here’s some news out of Russia that isn’t related the Olympics: Nadia Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, who were recently released from prison, are no longer members of Pussy Riot, and it doesn’t look like the split was 100 percent amicable.
-
The Freedom to Fail
Recording artist Moby writes over at The Guardian about why he needed to leave New York and come to Los Angeles for his art. Los Angles gave him the room and the freedom to fail. “Plenty of other cities in…
-
Second Twitter Fiction Festival Approaches
Last year, we blogged about the first annual Twitter Fiction Festival after it happened. This year, we’re giving you a heads up: if you want to participate in this year’s festival, happening March 12–16, submit your idea to the organizers here.…
-
Mary Shelley’s Correspondence Discovered!
Nora Crook, in perhaps the most exciting click ever to happen on the internet, made the discovery of a lifetime when she came across previously unpublished correspondence from the late Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. The article at The Guardian describes…
-
Seamus Heaney’s Last Poem
Seamus Heaney’s poem “In A Field” is allegedly the last poem ever written by Seamus Heaney before his passing in June. The Irish Poet wrote it following an invitation by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy to contribute to a memorial anthology about…
-
Den Bechdel Testet
You may have heard of the Bechdel test, named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who popularized it in one of her comics: A movie or book passes the test if it contains a) at least two female characters, who b) talk…
-
Mendokusai (I Can’t Be Bothered)
Young people who aren’t interested in marriage or children, sure, but young people who aren’t interested in sex? According to this article in the Guardian, that’s increasingly the case in Japan, where a government survey “found that 45% of women aged…
-
Our Future Depends On Reading!
“Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading…
-
Feminist Victories You Haven’t Heard About
In a nation as solipsistic as the US, we don’t hear much about politics in other countries. This is doubly true when it comes to woman-centered movements, and triply true when those movements are in Africa. In an opinion piece…
-
Fanfiction Gathers Force
Ever since Fifty Shades of Grey, originally written with characters from Twilight as its protagonists, struck gold, the mainstream publishing world has had to take a closer look at fanfiction. In the (increasingly unlikely) event you’re unfamiliar with the world of fanfiction,…
-
Writing and Drinking and Writing about Drinking
Alcohol and authors. It’s a subject so old and rich and fraught you could write a book on it—which is exactly what Olivia Laing did. That book is called The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink, and Blake Morrison’s review…