Fiction’s Frilliest Genre Gets Real(er)
Note: A version of this article was originally published in the San Antonio Current in 2002, and was reprinted in the Detroit Metro Times in 2003. — She gasped as he plunged his fingers beneath her...
View ArticleRequiem for Reality
Emerson said, “…wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things.” It’s in his essay, “Nature,” and he was talking about the sacrifice of sacred truth to profane ambitions:...
View ArticleAnnie Proulx & The Gourds
Annie Proulx. Photo by Gus Powell. A friend who knows I have a deep love for both the books of Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx and the music of The Gourds sent me a link to the NYTimes...
View ArticleAdventures of a Young Man: The First Good-Bye
“Your children are not your children. They come not from you but through you for they are but the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” – Gibran Ma worried. The majority of her energy was...
View ArticleOn Writing: The Hunchers, the Librarians and War
The enduring conceptions of what we nowadays call the “writing process” come from two camps: the Ugly Hunchers and the Mincing Librarians. Hunchers are characterized not only by their grotesque facial...
View ArticleA New Take On The Gothic Novel
Brian McGreevy recently sold his first novel “Hemlock Grove,” a revisionist gothic which explores the nature of monstrosity. McGreevy, who shows proper disdain for the supernatural teen craze led by...
View ArticleRead This And You Will Become Smart And Go To Heaven
Library Dictators often come wrapped in lofty literary pretensions, it seems. And you thought the novel was dead. Suzanne Murkelson has a terrific piece in Foreign Policy about the literary lives of...
View ArticleReal True Grit
“Well, there is no beat of a good friend.” –Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn, in the novel, True Grit. “He is not my friend.” –Young Mattie Ross, speaking of Rooster Cogburn, in True Grit. The American...
View ArticleAdventure and Art: A Manifesto for Women and Grrrls
I believe grrrls and women should have adventures. And we should have the opportunity to experience the adventures of other grrrls and women through books, film, music and visual arts. Too many times...
View ArticleHappy Birthday, Annie Proulx!
Annie Proulx @ 2008 by PEN American Center/Beowolf Sheehan Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx (The Shipping News) was born on this day in 1935. Proulx’s first novel Postcards was published when...
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