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What does a growth of new grass on a hillside in spring make you feel? Is it a mixture of nostalgia and hope? Or what does a distant mountain range wreathed in a crown of clouds make you feel?
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As we go, we are breathlessly held in an in-between state, a limbo, a transition.
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Fenton Johnson discusses his new book, AT THE CENTER OF ALL BEAUTY.
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Few people can tell that my smile is literally fake.
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James Hornor discusses his new novel, VICTORIA FALLS.
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Adam Nemett discusses his debut novel, WE CAN SAVE US ALL.
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While he doesn’t offer all the answers we want, he reminds us that we don’t see things as they are, which is key to anything.
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Poet Corinne Lee on writing her epic book-length poem Plenty and finding new ways to live in a rapidly changing world.
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Jon Day discusses his memoir, Cyclogeography: Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier, the bicycle as a symbol of gentrification, and the city as “a technology for living.”
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This week, your Storming Bohemian has moved to a new house. Again. And so some reflections: There is much to be said for stability, I know. The steady quiet observation of the likes of Annie Dillard or Henry Thoreau evokes my admiration. I am even an oblate of a Benedictine monastery. I know monks who […]
...moreWe have an unfortunate tendency to let motherhood eclipse all aspects of a person’s identity—and then to turn around and call motherhood a faulty aspiration. Luckily there are moms like Antonia Malchik who write anyway, and implore us to remember moms like Elinore Pruitt Stewart, who ventured out onto the Wyoming frontier with her daughter: Why is work like […]
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When people asked what I was going to do after high school, I said, “Leave town.” I wasn’t kidding. I hadn’t applied to a single college.
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But to become a writer I needed at least to learn about my own superstitions. I needed space in the house to sketch with words. I needed to commit heresies. And those acts had to feel pleasurable.
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I have a tendency to read difficult books when my life is difficult.
...more(n.) skilled writing in praise of trivial or unpleasant subjects When people in a privileged society look deep within themselves to find what is missing, a streamlined clothes-cleaning experience comes up a lot. More often than not, the people who come up with lessening this burden on mankind are dudes, or duos of dudes, who […]
...moreIt may not be 1869 anymore, but fear not: the golden age of conservation literature is far from over. As part of the Pacific Standard‘s week-long series on “opting-out,” Eva Holland writes about the tradition of environmental writing, from Thoreau to David Gessner. Also in the series: a patriarchal cult in Alaska, homesteading, and the “new domesticity.”
...moreReady to achieve virtual self-reliance? The National Endowment for the Arts grant has recently awarded the University of Southern California a $40,000 grant to produce a video game based on Henry David Thoreau’s works where players can “follow in the virtual footsteps of Thoreau and conduct their own experiments in living deliberately.” Other literary-based media […]
...moreMorrow’s supple prose is grounded in lyricism, prose unafraid to give the reader both the forest and the trees. Bradford Morrow’s new novel, a feminist interpretation of fairy-tale tropes, explores the life of Cassandra: single-mother, teacher, dowser.
...more“In America, we tend to think belief trumps knowledge. To tease out the truth from the fabric of lies that surrounds us requires a certain degree of intelligence. Which is bad news for us, alas.
...moreStop reading this and go outside and take a walk somewhere nature-like. Right now. Okay, did you go? Good. Now you might actually pay attention to me.
...moreJournalist Robert Sullivan often documents unlovely corners of the natural world: The Meadowlands (1998) turned a naturalist’s eye on a dispiriting region of northern New Jersey notable for its Mafia dumping grounds, while in Rats (2004) Sullivan gave Ratus norvegicus the Dian Fossey treatment. His latest book, The Thoreau You Don’t Know, attempts to recuperate […]
...morePeter Rock’s darkly evocative fifth novel follows a father and daughter’s underground existence in a city park.
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