Still Life
Unlike the majority of photographers, Cindy Sherman seldom captures; she creates. Rarely does she not appear in her work, and as such she invents for herself a new use and purpose in each piece, a new role.
Matters of the Heart
“The Voyage” ends with Jon and José seated in the lobby of the border post, José in his orange, oversized sunglasses – “stunner shades” – awaiting their sentence for carrying a firearm across the Canadian Border.
Why Write?
If the Knitting Ladies serve as any indication, the author of White Teeth, On Beauty, and, most recently, NW, could have blown raspberries into the microphone and still enraptured her audience.
In Defiance of Terror
Rushdie has never been able to hide his disdain for fanaticism’s brutality, but as he stood at the podium it was his sorrow, more than anything, that was most evident. But, he said, “It’s the writers we remember. It’s the writers who outlast the regimes.”
Eaten Alive by Literature
There are two subgroups of launch party in the literary world. Let’s call them, in the taxonomy of events, the genera: Translucent and Opaque. What the fuck does this mean?
A Writing Weekend in the Woods
Writers have a weakness for trivial details. It’s how you carry out the old show, don’t tell dictum. Off the cuff I can’t differentiate an oak from an ash, but with some research I can show you the whole forest.
Anarchy as a Relationship
By definition, anarchists technically don’t believe in government, class, or money, and are acutely aware of any and all repression. In a country that sings the word “patriotic” like a top ten hit and whose only true faith is capitalism, their alienation is a given.
Honor Your Narrative: Junot Díaz at the Fitz
In 1974, when Díaz was six years old and had just emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New Jersey, the library opened up his world. “The idea that I could access all of those books, that they were so freely available, felt like magic.”
Teen Dreams and Time Travel
You’d have to be a unique species of naïf to think questions like these take Molly Ringwald by surprise. Actually, you’d have to be the stupidest person on earth.
Literature, Point-Blank to the Head
On Saturday night, 600 locals packed themselves into NE Minneapolis’s Uppercut Boxing Gym to drink, show off their greyscale outfits, support local literature, and watch writers beat the shit out of each other.
