Knife Skills
The website of the Nobel Prize Committee describes Louise Glück’s poetry as “free of poetic formalities” and notable, by contrast, for its use of “daily spoken...
‘River’ Runs
To the Editors: Christopher Benfey’s dismissive description of performances of Spoon River Anthology as “aw-shucks…with straw hats and string ties” and his belief that it first...
The Coming of Age of Black Social Horror
Black horror has come of age. It began as oral tales Black folks would tell each other to pass down cultural warnings and taboos during enslavement...
8 Jamaican Women Writers You Should Be Reading
When I first read “Girl”—Jamaica Kincaid’s well-anthologized short story featuring a mother instructing her young daughter how to behave and carry herself—I heard my own mother’s...
Lafayette Library Board Grants Itself Power to Ban Books
The recent tsunami of book challenges, particularly to LGBTQ and POC books, has revealed the inner workings of library and school board meetings that usually go...
Training My Brain to Read Comics and Graphic Novels
The human brain is built for reading comics and graphic novels. Let me explain. Apparently, our brains are hardwired for visual content. Not only are we...
On Reading Pandemic Fiction During a Pandemic
I read adrienne maree brown’s Grievers during our COVID Christmas. My husband had brought the virus home after attending a work event in the city, testing...
An Author Watches and Ranks 5 Movies About Fictional Authors
Lots of people dream about being a writer for a living, but what does that actually look like? I certainly didn’t have any real-life working authors...
What is Historical Fiction?
What is historical fiction? Historical fiction, literature that is built around a time period in the past, is one of the genres that I most credit...
What Is An Unreliable Narrator? The Different Types
My first introduction to the idea of an unreliable narrator was through a story by Donald Barthelme in my first English class in college. Young me...
