Last one of the year! Has 2025 seemed to anyone else like it lasted 1,000 years? Anne of Green Gables fans have been queering the title character’s passionate friendship with bestie Diana for a long time, but do you know about her genderqueer son Walter? In this essay at the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s CBC Arts
December Links Roundup: Trans of Green Gables Read More »
All writers have a shtick. Garth Greenwell was musing in our online book group today about his fondness for the word “little” as a substitute for the affectionate diminutive endings that English lacks. The novel he asked us to read this month, David Szalay’s noir tragedy Flesh, should win the Booker Prize for Most Occurrences
Happy National Poetry Month! The same absurd positivity that puts reclusive Emily Dickinson’s face on tote bags across America has designated April for celebrating poetry, based on T.S. Eliot’s decidedly un-celebratory opening to The Waste Land, “April is the cruelest month…” Old Tom was onto something, because the reawakening to life is painful when each
April Links Roundup: A Cruel, Poetic Month Read More »
Two months into the regime described by the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog as “Triumph of the Shill,” we hear the word “fiction” thrown around a lot as an insult, the devil on the shoulder whose nemesis is the angelic “fact”. At the same time, this administration seems grotesquely afraid of the ethical and historical
March Links Roundup: Fictional Truths, Factual Lies Read More »
The National Park Service has removed all references to “queer” and “transgender” on the Stonewall National Monument, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City where trans women kicked off the modern LGBTQ rights movement by fighting back against a police raid. Journalist Ari Drennen reported on X that the picture of legendary trans activist Sylvia
Cultural Erasure and Resistance Read More »
My Jewish cultural heritage remains important to me despite not practicing the religion. Simple at-home rituals, like eating apples and honey with my mom-of-choice last night for Rosh Hashanah, add a sacred continuity to the life of our multi-faith household. After Hamas’ murderous attack and kidnapping of hostages on October 7, and the Israeli government’s
Mourning Gaza During the High Holy Days Read More »
In my capacity as cat-sitter to the literati, over Labor Day weekend I shared my home office with my orange nephews Rilke and Lorca, as well as my furry son Theodore. Much hissing and pissing ensued while the three lads jockeyed for territory. I alternated separating them into different rooms and allowing them supervised free-range
Summertime, and the living is…not easy. Many book-lovers are heartbroken over new revelations that the recently deceased fiction writer Alice Munro, a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, covered up her husband’s sexual abuse of her daughter. Andrea Robin Skinner’s July 7 essay in the Toronto Star describes how her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began molesting her
July Links Roundup: Surviving Without Heroes Read More »
Happy May, readers! I have been traveling a lot, writing a little, and gluing things together. Remember how, during the pandemic, those of us stuck at home went through a Little House on the Prairie phase of cooking and handicrafts to stay grounded in our bodies in our suddenly virtual social world? My Instant Pot
May Links Roundup: Have a Good Time with Bad Art Read More »
So much good stuff from the online journals I’ve been reading lately, I had to make a separate links post! At Frontier Poetry, Chris Watkins queers George Herbert’s tradition of Christ-haunted sonnets in “Prayer (II)”. Prayer—even now, secular,every poem you write, a knees-bent childleaning on their mattress. The mouth molecular.The porno of your guilt. A Girls
March Bonus Links: Notable Poems and Short Fiction Around the Web Read More »