March 7, 2016
Against Certainty: On Contest Judging and Self-Assuredness
Writing in The New York Times Book Review in early January, Rivka Galchen elucidated her opinion on literature’s unforgivable sin. To wit: For me, the unforgivable sin in literature is […]
February 25, 2016
When You Became The Ghost in Her
In a dark room at NYU Langone Hospital on First Avenue, the technician rolling you in squeezes your left hand, holding onto it for a moment. He’s from China, and […]
February 23, 2016
Audre Lorde
Last Thursday, February 18, was the birthday of Audre Lorde. This semester, I am teaching a course focused on poetry and social justice, so I think about Audre Lorde’s writing […]
February 19, 2016
The Art of the Literary Humblebrag
The humblebrag (RIP Harris Wittels) seems to be part of our contemporary culture, but its literary variety is of an ilk slightly different from your normal “I-seriously-need-to-stop-going-to-the-gym-5-days-a-week” kind. For those unfamiliar […]
February 12, 2016
Life of a Poem Part I: The First Line
For a long time, the poem I have wanted to write has been George Starbuck’s “Of Late.” The yearning to want to write what someone else has already written is […]
February 11, 2016
Empathy & Female Anger: On Yael Hedaya’s “Housebroken” (Part 3)
I didn’t want to write about “Matti,” the last story in Yael Hedaya’s collection Housebroken. Perhaps because it’s a story I’m tired of hearing: women forgiving men for the most […]
January 31, 2016
Crossing That Line
Yesterday afternoon was a day I’d been anticipating for almost a year — the high school students’ orientation for the joint Writers in Baltimore Schools and Johns Hopkins University Writing […]
January 31, 2016
The Happiness Game: On Yael Hadaya’s “Housebroken” (Part 2)
“The Happiness Game,” the second story in Housebroken, is my favorite of the three novellas. While the idea of a happiness game is a universal paradox, it is also quintessentially an Israeli one. […]
January 30, 2016
Under the Eye of the Name: On Writing and Insomnia
I’ve had chronic insomnia all my life— I’m going through a bout of it as I write this. When the sleepless nights start to add up, a phantasm filters […]
January 25, 2016
I Wanted to Ruin It for You: On Yael Hedaya’s Housebroken (Part 1)
Do you remember that strangely addictive taste of drugstore lipstick on your teenage lips And how it wouldn’t taste the same if you bit right into it? But […]
December 30, 2015
Bullets for You
“The Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice last month resigned from a previous small-town police job when he was deemed emotionally unstable and unfit for duty, […]
December 27, 2015
An End In Itself
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. — Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho I’ve been thinking about failure all month, ever since I wrote about it in the […]