July 19, 2019
A Day in the Life of a Teacher-Writer-Parent
[Pictured above: The Teacher-Writer-Parent wearing the huge, blueberry-like “Thinking Cap” her son made to “help her think of really good writing.”] 5:30 a.m.—Woken up by the five-year-old boy sitting on […]
July 10, 2019
“Slightly Wavy Due to Being Out of Tune”: On Richard Linklater’s Waking Life
“Waking Life” (2001) was written and directed by Richard Linklater, who caught the eye of critics with his 1991 film, “Slacker.” The film’s title comes from the George Santayana maxim: “Sanity is […]
July 1, 2019
“Don’t Be Coy”: A Chat With Keri Smith and Thomas Moody of Hanging Loose Press
I recently spoke with Thomas Moody and Keri Smith about the editorial work they do for Hanging Loose Press, an indie publisher with an amazing literary history. Hanging Loose has […]
June 27, 2019
Amie Souza Reilly Recommends: “A Gift Basket for Budding Feminists”
Amie Souza Reilly teaches in the English Department at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. She is the Feminist Fridays blogger at The Adroit Journal and publishes creative nonfiction and […]
June 17, 2019
Eddie Schmidt Recommends: an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated TV/Filmmaker Tells You What to Watch
Eddie Schmidt is an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, as well as a showrunner and director of acclaimed nonfiction series. Six of his projects have premiered at the Sundance […]
June 12, 2019
Eric J. Sundquist’s To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature
Often as conceptually layered as the texts it considers, for a current project I recently looked again at To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature (1994), Eric […]
June 3, 2019
The Doodles of Famous Authors
I’m not shy about my love of words, letters, and even whole sentences. So imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon a truly impressive feat of cultural curation over at […]
May 31, 2019
Awkward Family Photos
I love to visit Awkward Family Photos. It’s a site heavy on the nostalgia. Each new photograph carries with it reminders of the moments you want to remember and maybe […]
May 28, 2019
Mitch Levenberg’s Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants
As I was hovering at the border between writing poetry and writing fiction, I discovered a collection of short stories, Mitch Levenberg’s Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants, which made […]
May 23, 2019
The Sheer Will to Disrupt: A Conversation With Dylan Krieger
Dylan Krieger is a force in contemporary poetry. A self-described “divining rod of ungodly proportions,” Krieger has written Giving Godhead (Delete, 2017), which the New York Times declared, “the best […]
May 16, 2019
How To Piss Off Your Teacher
1) Actually major in texting under the table. 2) Send rude emails about your grades. Bonus points for bringing your parents into it. 3) Send emails that begin with “yo,” […]
May 10, 2019
The Music of Echo in Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”
1901 illustration to the poem by W. E. F. Britten Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lotos-Eaters” responds to the following section from Homer’s The Odyssey: “I was driven from there by […]