How to Write Violence
How to talk about violence in literature, when the term violence is so broad? “Violence” is defined as “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something,” but it’s also used to depict the “strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force.” How to
In Bookstores Near You
Author: Leslie Jill Patterson | Categories: Authors, Book Reviews, Fiction, Reading, Series No comments
In her latest novel, Silence & Song, Melanie Rae Thon once again wanders into the world of devastation. The opening clip captures a fiery car accident, one that could have been avoided if only the father, the driver, had agreed to stop at a hotel for the night
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “What to Do When Your Spouse is Burning” by Matt Cashion
In his short story, “What to Do When Your Spouse is Burning” (Moon City Review), Matt Cashion uses a list of instructions to subtly reveal the dissolution of a marriage. Cashion’s narrator begins by offering wry examples of what not to do when one’s spouse is burning. Don’t waste
NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA: Journey to the Center of an American Document
This is the start of a monthly journey through Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. I’ve loved this book for many years. It’s scholarly and luminous, unfolding a rich lexicon. Open its pages and whole rivers, chunks of amethyst, living birds, and secret mammoth skeletons tumble forth.
Review: THE PITTSBURGH ANTHOLOGY Edited by Eric Boyd
The Pittsburgh Anthology Ed. Eric Boyd Belt Books, September 2015 236 pp; $20 Buy paperback “Pittsburgh has always been a scrappy city, characterized by unflapping tenacity, even as outsourcing and the ills of globalization threatened its survival,” writes Kevin Tasker in “Rebirth of the Hollywood Lanes,” one of the
Writ in Water: Storytelling on the Rez
I ask about water. Water in the West, water in the desert, water that saves and water that kills. Water on a tribal reservation: water for ranches, water for livestock, water hauled hundreds of miles by truck, water for uranium mining, water for ceremonies and legends, water for drinking.
What is Your Writing Routine?
What is your writing routine? What does it look like when you sit to write? Any special rituals? I am so glad you asked. It’s really pretty great. I sit at my computer, and I check Facebook for, like, ten minutes. Okay, haha, twenty minutes. And then I write.
Angela Carter’s “Unicorn” and the Illusion of Empowerment Through Objectification
“Q. What have unicorns and virgins got in common A. They are both fabulous beasts.” In the new collection of Angela Carter’s mostly forgotten, but viscerally affecting poetry, Carter perverts mythological symbols in order to subvert the mythology of femininity. Just as Simone De Beauvoir lamented that “one is not
How Political Campaigns Are Like Novels
By this point in a presidential campaign, a candidate and his or her handlers have, like any good writer, spent dozens if not hundreds of hours fine-tuning their story. A candidate’s story has all the key elements of a novel: a hero (the candidate him/herself), the plot (the candidate’s
Rereading GILEAD on the Eve of the Iowa Caucus
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead became my favorite novel a decade ago. I read the first half the book in Iowa City and the second half the book in Wichita, Kansas, which undoubtedly brought the narrator’s prairie landscape to life. I lived the book in solitude, existing with Reverend John Ames