July 24, 2019
Organic Choreography: An Interview with Jane Alison, Author of Meander, Spiral, Explode
This post is the third in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
July 12, 2019
So That’s How You Do It: An Interview with Michael Noll, Author of The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction
This post is the second in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
April 28, 2019
“Can’t You Rest Now?”: Nightwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Madness
I have a theory: the ending of Season 7, Episode 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“Beneath You”) was inspired by Djuna Barnes’s queer modernist novel Nightwood (1936). I know it sounds […]
October 11, 2017
Blade Runner 2049, Poetry, and Electric Sheep
In undertaking Blade Runner 2049, a sequel to Ridley Scott’s much-theorized 1982 cult classic Blade Runner, director Denis Villeneuve had some big shoes to fill. His shrewd move was […]
July 13, 2017
A Short History of Weird Girls
A few weeks ago, Jill Soloway wrote about being a “weird girl” in Lenny. The piece was more battle cry of a brave soul in the wilderness than your typical […]
June 12, 2017
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Publishing* But Were Afraid to Ask
To writers, editors and agents are like unicorns, magical beasts that hold the key to the publishing kingdom. My writer friends and I spend so much time speculating about these […]
September 19, 2016
Falling Asleep While Reading
The greatest enemy of print publishing might not be digital media or the widespread expectation that reading material be free. It might be the human body. A lot of people […]
November 29, 2015
“Merely in living as and where we live”: Part II
Last week, on a bright, blustery Baltimore morning, Joseph Harrison rang the doorbell at 32 W 25th Street, and we entered Royal Books. Specializing in first editions, the store is a book […]
November 25, 2015
Poison Gas and the Origins of Data Preservation
“After reading [an] account of the astonishing possibilities of only one small branch of the 170,000 known families of insects, I began to wonder if there might not be some […]
September 30, 2015
One Book at a Time
I’m not sure what felt better, successfully defending my dissertation, or returning 120 books to the library and being able to see the floor of my office again. My bookcases […]
November 19, 2012
The Machine in the Library, the Machine in the Bookstore: On Book Machines
This past week, NPR ran a story on the “Biblio-Mat,” which is exactly what it sounds like, a book dispensing machine. Reports NPR: Earlier this year, Stephen Fowler, owner of The Monkey’s […]
July 21, 2012
from A Field Guide to North American Blurbs
As I’m preparing two blurbs this weekend, I’m looking at a lot of blurbs and thinking about the genre. Maybe there are some observations to be made about the varieties […]