Just Doing It: A Conversation with Daniel Ortberg
Mallory Ortberg discusses their new book, The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, what it means to be a self-taught writer, and questioning gender.
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Posts Tagged: The Hairpin
Lady Killers and Our Obsession with Murder: Talking with Tori Telfer
Tori Telfer discusses her first book Lady Killers and the fragile “social saran wrap” that keeps us all from killing each other.
...moreThis Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
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Transgressive and Unruly Women: Talking with Anne Helen Petersen
Anne Helen Peterson discusses her new book, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman, her writing process, and academia.
...moreThis Week in Essays
Noriko Nakada writes with mesmerizing beauty on outrunning her darkness for Catapult. In the latest TORCH installment at The Rumpus, Nadia Owusu traces the inherited trauma in her family’s history.
...moreClothes Do Not Make the Man
On our way home, Lauren told me she talked to another woman at the Halloween party who went on and on about wishing to be a man for a day. The other woman just wanted to know what it felt like to penetrate. I didn’t like for the idea of a man to be condensed […]
...moreHashtag at the Wedding
For The Hairpin, Ella Riley-Adams delves into the phenomenon of the wedding hashtag, and the ways we control and shape the narrative around crucial life milestones.
...moreSorry, Who?
Pop culture has been a steadfast element of public life for a while, but it feels like lately there’s even more pressure to keep up with a certain caché of writers, movies, TV shows, artists, and events. At The Hairpin, Rosa Lyster turns this impulse on its head and gives us an out with the Žižek […]
...moreA Women’s Place
Most of these sites were beloved exactly for that same dual sense of security and inclusion members loved — and when that sense was lost, from time or toxicity or something else, the woman who made them moved on to another new place. For The Hairpin, Julia Carpenter writes about the community spaces women have carved for themselves […]
...moreHow to Write Something
Keep a close eye on your Twitter account. Important things may be said there that you will be expected to weigh in on, and if you don’t, everyone will wonder if you fell asleep in the bathroom stall of the bar last night and are still there, head sunken low next to the toilet, one […]
...moreThe Quest for Literary Immortality
In Those Who Write for Immortality, [Heather] Jackson includes a checklist of factors relevant to literary survival. Did the writer have family and friends to ensure that her work stayed in print? When was her biography written, and by whom? Was she associated with a movement, or significant people? At The Hairpin, contributing editor Alexandra […]
...moreGood Writing and Bad Surveillance
The idea of “good writing” is shaped by social forces—that are in turn shaped by economic and historical forces—and our own identity privileges and privileges as editors (if we are editors). Determining what is good or bad is an aesthetic choice that requires the exercising of power. People who traditionally hold power in our society […]
...moreFail Again, Fail Better
How it all got so bad is a blur. I blocked the door. I blacked out the basement windows. I remember myself curled in feral positions, sounds on repeat getting louder, climbing up and out of the window to piss in the grass. When I had an exam, I studied for sixteen hours, then didn’t […]
...moreSylvia Plath and Race
Why Plath? People are surprised or disappointed or embarrassed when I automatically cite her as one of my writing influences, one of my life influences. I think it’s because of the stigma of suicide and ingrained bias. She’s a polarizing figure, serving as a feminist icon or a creative failure, depending on the person wearing […]
...moreDon’t Fear the Reaper
At The Hairpin, Caitlin Doughty, mortician and author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory, talks about death positivity, women in the funeral business, zombies, and why she thinks the recent move toward alternative burial practices is more than just a trend: I don’t want to say it’s a trend […]
...moreDear Diary, A History
The diary novel is an understudied genre dating back to the Victorian era, often associated with young women, that includes (and sometimes combines) fiction and non-fiction. At The Hairpin, Johannah King-Slutzky traces the history of this literary niche.
...moreTexting with bell hooks
Ever find yourself in a risky situation where you are being asked to give your number to a not-so-awesome-but-also-frightening-and-possibly-aggressive person? Here’s your solution! Give out this number instead and avoid the danger. And spread a little feminism along the way.
...moreLost Words For A Spruce Tree
Over at The Hairpin, Isabelle Fraser interviews Ann Wroe, obituary writer for The Economist. Wroe has written obituaries for J.D. Salinger, Aaron Swartz, and the 25-year old carp that was “England’s best-loved fish”. On Marie Smith, the last person to speak Eyak, an Alaskan language, she relates: “She was the only person left who remembered all the different […]
...moreWanna Go To A Pity Party?
Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist is having a pity party and you’re invited. Check you coats and your positive attitude at the door and enjoy…or you know… don’t. “I wrote down a few affirmations, discovered peace and serenity and my upper-arm obesity, but then I accidentally killed my succulent plant and Justin Bieber isn’t […]
...moreThe Extraordinary Ladies In My Life
Disaster has always been my most loyal muse. Whenever I glued my hands together as a child; I took to my diary. Whenever the dog I’m dog-sitting jumps out of the car I’m driving (it only happened once, and it was OK); I blog. Through bad dates, bad years, job fails, grocery-store disasters and the […]
...moreA Unique Way of Getting Down With Gertrude Stein
Rumpus assistant editor Lauren O’Neal interviews Michelle Sutherland about her opera/musical/self described “event” Gertrude Stein SAINTS over at the Hairpin. They talk about the role of men in the play, how Carnegie Mellon got on board, and how rap totally works for this! Gertrude Stein really hung out with the biggest macho dickheads of the […]
...moreThis Woman Does Practice Santeria
If all you know about Santería is that it’s a line in that one Sublime song, you should check out this interview with Caridad, a Santería priestess, over at the Hairpin. Caridad explains the basics of her religion (more accurately called Lucumí), including nature spirits, reading the future with cowrie shells, and how animal-sacrifice rituals […]
...moreClarifying Chivalry
“I am of the opinion that a major front of “the gender wars” could be won with a simple lesson in etymology. If we merely understood the actual meanings and histories that certain loaded words contain, we could be living in a post-gender society. Maybe.” Jake Flanagin writes at The Hairpin that chivalry has been […]
...moreOuting Literary Heroes
Ever wondered about the sexual orientation of classic novels protagonist? Without much effort, several many of the main characters in Fitzgerald’s masterpiece can be read as gay: the flamboyantly fabulous party-throwing, clotheshorse Gatsby, with his closets full of pink suits; the unemotional, athletic, androgynous Jordan, Ester Bloom did, and took some of them – including […]
...moreFemale Comedians: On Laughter and Stigma
Some reviewers still draw a divide between the rules that apply to male comedians and their female counterparts, as seen in in Brian Lowry’s piece which criticizes Sarah Silverman for being “as dirty as the guys.” Ann Friedman of The Hairpin created a pie chart to draw attention to comedy’s troubled relation with gender. The […]
...more“I Got My Birth Chart Read”
When asked about her decision to relocate to Bangkok, Jessica Mack, a women’s rights consultant hailing from the U.S.A. says, “In a nutshell, I’m in Bangkok because my life sort of fell apart…” After the end of a 7-year relationship, moving out of her apartment, and a bike accident, Mack took a step back from […]
...moreA Spooktacular Halloween Reading List
It’s Halloween, and the Hairpin’s Jia Tolentino has put together a frightfully good list of spooky books to read by the light of the jack-o-lantern. This list has it all: “futurist nightmare, teenage romance with a Bataille-esque hint of sexual horror, Victorian inventors, Escherian funhouses, small-town disappearances and mysteries”—and that’s just the first book. What […]
...moreWhat’s a 5-Letter Word for “Sexism”?
Months ago, we blogged about a mind-blowing New Yorker story on the crazy world of high-level crossword puzzle competitions. For crossword coverage that isn’t multiple years old, check out this Hairpin piece on the shrinking role of women in the field. A preview: Many professional and leisure communities have some manner of “woman problem,” and it’s true […]
...moreThree Ways of Looking at Sex and the City
In this week’s New Yorker, TV critic Emily Nussbaum grapples with the cultural legacy of Sex and the City: High-feminine instead of fetishistically masculine, glittery rather than gritty, and daring in its conception of character, “Sex and the City” was a brilliant and, in certain ways, radical show. It also originated the unacknowledged first female anti-hero […]
...moreThe Truth About Scientology
I’ve always known that people were curious about the church, but I wish they’d take the time to understand a little more about why people join and what they get out of it, instead of just writing it off as the cult of Tom Cruise and its ‘brainwashed’ members. If any one thing prompted me […]
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