January 9, 2018
That Never Happened
The memory came back to me today while I was washing dishes and privately fuming over a Facebook thread. A Facebook thread! Such a trivial thing to get worked up […]
December 13, 2017
Power and Powerlessness in Kristen Roupenian’s Cat Person
In addition to how Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” (the New Yorker short story that has recently gone viral) resonates with the #MeToo movement, what struck me about it was the nuance of […]
June 20, 2017
Strippers and Lost Tampons: In Defense of Women’s “Personal” Writing
A New Yorker article recently declared the death of the personal essay, but I won’t be attending the funeral. The article’s author, Jia Tolentino, identifies personal writing with women and […]
March 21, 2016
Utter Shame: Literary Tarot Readings Gone Wrong
I found Miss Cleo’s Tarot Power set in a vintage toy store. The package contained a collectors’ edition tarot deck, an instructional video, and a bonus copy of Miss Cleo’s […]
February 27, 2016
Something to Say: Coming to Writing Later in Life
My ukulele teacher told me to stop being so nervous. Has anyone ever told you to stop feeling nervous? It’s an impossible directive to follow, especially if you’re not actually […]
April 29, 2015
Drunken Savages with Quill Pens
At one point in his Philosophical Letters on the English, in which he observed the culture and society of France’s rival across the Channel, Voltaire, that paragon of French neoclassical […]
March 3, 2015
Night Thoughts (I)
Dickinson’s dashes and erratic capitalizations seem unusual or eccentric only to those who are unfamiliar with 19th century letter-writing. Byron’s letters, for example, are punctuated entirely in Dickinsonese, and similarly […]