I wrote an essay for the Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook, out this month from Belt Publishing, and it was recently published online. I’ll be reading it at the book’s launch party on June 22 at Market Garden Brewery — if you’re in the Cle, come on out. Tweet
Category Archives: Books
An Unnatural Mother
I wrote an essay about Elena Ferrante and motherhood, and the Rumpus was kind enough to publish it. Tweet
Half Wollstonecraft, Half LOLcats: Talking with Caitlin Moran
In 2011, the London Times columnist Caitlin Moran published “How to Be a Woman,” a book that combined personal essays with an outline of the state of—and need for—feminism today. The book was a best-seller in England, and, by the summer of 2012, in America as well, thanks in large part to Moran’s brutally funny […]
Illness and Fireflies
In November of 2008, three days after she was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, Susan Gubar underwent a debulking operation. The procedure entails the removal of part of the cancer—and often several of the organs that are in contact with it—and, as Gubar writes in her new book, “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” it’s the […]
George Saunders Gives Advice
In May, 2005, The Believer launched Sedaratives, an advice column helmed by Amy Sedaris that soon featured a cast of guest advisers—writers, producers, actors, and comedians—who, every month, were given a selection of questions that ranged from the poignant to the, well, not: My mother says that nobody has good manners anymore. This coming from […]
Lucy Worsley and the History of the British Home
In the November 21, 2011, issue of the magazine, Lauren Collins wrote about Lucy Worsley, the chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, which runs the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, Kew Palace, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall. “In a land of ponderous dons who go by their initials, Dr. Lucy, a […]
Dear Sugar = Cheryl Strayed
On March 11, 2010, an anonymous writer introduced herself as the new voice of “Dear Sugar,” an advice column on the Web site the Rumpus. Sugar claimed she would offer a combination of “the by-the-book common sense of Dear Abby and the earnest spiritual cheesiness of Cary Tennis and the butt-pluggy irreverence of Dan Savage […]
Olive Oil’s Dark Side
In the August 13, 2007, issue of the magazine, Tom Mueller wrote about corruption in the olive-oil trade. By the late nineteen-nineties, olive oil—often cut with cheaper oils, such as hazelnut and sunflower seed—was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union. The E.U.’s anti-fraud office established an olive-oil task force, “yet fraud remains […]
New Again
October 6th was a busy day for New Directions. Tomas Tranströmer, who has been with the press since the nineteen-sixties, won the Nobel Prize for literature; amid the press frenzy that followed, the publisher pushed ahead with the scheduled launch of its revamped Web site and new literary blog, “Now That It’s Now.” The site […]
Bard Drive
Shakespeare was intended to be watched, not read—and yet millions of students still slog through paperback copies of “Hamlet.” Enter the Irish educational company Shakespeare in Bits, and its iPad and iPhone apps for “Romeo and Juliet,” “Macbeth,” and, just released September 7th, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (available for iPad only). Each app features animations […]