Author Archive

Round-Down: Writing Assistance Apps–Trendy? Or Here to Stay?

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With National Novel Writing Month already halfway over, many writers may be struggling to find new ways to motivate themselves to finish their marathon projects. Whereas old school methods such as the satisfying, yet solitary, thrill of accomplishment may have been enough back in the day, now, technology-hungry, modern-day

Round-Down: First Ever American Writers Museum Slated for 2017

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The United States is getting a new addition. In early 2017, the first museum dedicated to writers from the USA, the American Writers Museum, will open. Its mission will be to celebrate American writers and literature. The idea came from Malcolm O’Hagan, an Irish immigrant and retired engineer who is raising the funds for

Round-Down: Freedom of Expression Is Under Attack, Ever Important

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At the tail end of Banned Books Week, when some in the States were questioning whether raising awareness of freedom of speech was necessary anymore, on the other side of the world, in India, many authors were banding together in protest of what they see as the nation’s rising intolerance towards

Round-Down: On the Necessity of Banned Book Week

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Just in time for Banned Books Week, the first book to be banned in New Zealand in twenty years is available in the United States. The young adult novel, Into the River by Ted Dawe, which ironically won the 2013 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Award, was banned last

Round-Down: On Women Writers And the Fallout from ‘Confession’ in the Digital Age

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Social media is in the spotlight—or crosshairs, as it may be–in the literary landscape this week. Several articles and author interviews have touched upon both the benefits and the tremendous costs known to an author maintaining their online presence, none of them coming to a firm conclusion about whether it’s better to be

Round-Down: Reading As Luxury, or Necessity?

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  Garbage collector Jose Gutierrez gives new meaning to the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” The 53-year-old Colombian man has been collecting children’s books out of dumps for the past twenty years in order to provide a makeshift library to the city of Bogota. He now

Round-Down: Poetry? There’s an App for That

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As students and teachers alike head back to school this month, the Academy of American Poets is offering an email service designed to better integrate poetry into the classroom. Based on the popular Poem-A-Day series, where a previously unpublished poem is shared via email to subscribers, Teach This Poem launches

Round-Down: Historical Underpinnings of Continual Sexism in Publishing

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  Writer Catherine Nichols’ recent experiment, in which she submitted a manuscript to agents under a male pseudonym and received eight-and-a-half times the number of responses that the same manuscript received under her real name, confirms a gender bias in publishing that desperately needs addressing. Nichols is not without precedent in

Round-Down: The Role of Writers in a STEM Obsessed Society

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The recent appointment of Dr. Suzanne Koven to the first-ever writer-in-residence program at Massachusetts General Hospital has me asking: is the U.S. as a nation starting to re-value creativity after years of putting math and science first? An assistant professor of medicine at Harvard and renowned writer, Koven, in addition to

Round-Down: What You Should Know Going Into GO SET A WATCHMAN

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Today, July 14, is an auspicious day in literary news: Harper Lee’s much anticipated, and controversial, Go Set A Watchman is officially released across the world. An event for the record books–the title already broke the pre-order record held by the Harry Potter series and promises to break still