Author Archives

Em Perper
Bookseller, writer, editor.

Rest in Peace: Stories About Death Care

I. I’ve been thinking: What would my life look like if I were not afraid of death? Thinking too closely about not existing, not having a consciousness, sends me spiraling into a panic attack. Protestant Christians believe in an afterlife—a heaven, a hell. I did, too, for a while. I was confident, fervent, about heaven. I was no longer afraid to die. Now I’m not so sure. Nothingness scares me, but so does an eternity spent somewhere else.

A month ago, I shared a reading list about architecture. My pick from The Stranger was about Katrina Spade, an  archeologist from Seattle interested in environmentally friendly, community-centered death care: city centers dedicated to composting human beings and reuniting their bodies with nature. It’s called the Urban Death Project. A few days ago, Spade debuted her fundraising campaign to make the project a reality.

I studied artist Iris Gottlieb’s drawings of plants and fungi and Spade’s architectural plans. I liked the idea that the composting hubs would be unique to each city—much like libraries, which take on aspects of their communities while serving the same essential purpose worldwide, Spade explained. Reading the details of Spade’s proposal, I felt genuinely moved, and, for the first time in a decade, peaceful. Read more…

For the Love of Lettering: Stories About Typography

I didn’t pay attention to font until I worked for my college newspaper. After months of poring over proofs in InDesign, I realized I was learning the differences between fonts, their specific names, where they fit best. I’m no typographer—I don’t have the patience—but I’m fascinated by the subtle ways type entrances us and the absolutely grueling work that goes into its design and placement. Now, not only do I know the difference between type design and typography, but I try to make an effort to appreciate the work that goes in to the books I love, the gig posters for my favorite bands, the fonts on my blog.

1. “Praise the Colophon: Twenty Notes on Type.” (Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions, March 2015)

Colophon: a statement at the end of a book, typically with a printer’s emblem, giving information about its authorship and printing. You know: the details about the typeface, the typographer, the publisher, the who, what and where of the book’s creation. Nick Ripatrazone researches the colophon’s history and its artistic purpose. He concludes, “I call for the return of colophons. The battle of the book is not to be won or lost in preferences of print or digital. The page will always remain. Letters will always remain.” Read more…

The Fabulous (and Sometimes Dead-End) Opportunity of Being an Assistant

Photo by Peas

Nearly every exclusive field runs on assistants. The actor James Franco, like Buddha before him, had an assistant keep track of his meals and school assignments. The critic and writer Daphne Merkin has employed a steady stream of Ivy-educated elves. They’re tasked with everything from editing to returning dead houseplants. Bestselling novelist John Irving (The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany) has an assistant who types up his roughly twenty-five pages of handwritten manuscript a day. He recruits exclusively from liberal arts schools in cold climates like Middlebury and Vassar, to ensure his hires can survive the winter at his home in Dorset, Vermont. During the 2008 presidential season, recent Harvard grad Eric Lesser impressed senior advisor to the president, David Axelrod, with his color-coded system for tracking Obama’s campaign luggage. Lesser was taken on as Axelrod’s “special assistant,” assuming responsibility for everything from supervising his boss’s diet to organizing the first-ever presidential Seder.

—At Dissent, Francesca Mari examines the rise of the personal assistant. Creatives take assistant positions to network with professionals in their fields and to go behind-the-scenes in their craft. But it can’t last forever: Whereas internships might one day result in full-time employment, the role of the assistant stagnates in the end: “The worst thing to be called,” [Darren] Aronofsky’s assistant told me, long after he’d moved on, “is a really good assistant.”  (h/t Michelle Legro)

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All Dressed Up: Five Stories About Style

In my not-so-past life as a fashion magazine addict (let’s be real—I bought seven of last month’s fashion mags for a quarter each at a recent library sale), this time of year was crucial to me. What kinds of skirts would appear on the pages of Seventeen? Would I be able to afford them? Would one-piece swimsuits finally be cool? Was this the year I started blow-drying my hair?! Each issue was a mini-New Year’s. Anything was possible.

These days, I love fashion for its feminist and political sensibilities, and I am far more into comfort than trends. I work at a job where I push the style envelope, but hey, no one said anything to me when I wore combat boots every day this winter. (That doesn’t mean I’m going to start wearing shorts to the office, though, much as I crave a temperature-sensitive dapper aesthetic. Even I have my limits.) But style? Style has no limits. Wear socks with sandals. Dress as a different character every day. Admire your reflection in the subway windows. Here are five stories about our connection with the clothes we wear. Read more…

Yes Means Yes, So What’s the Catch? A Reading List About Consent

I subscribe to writer Ann Friedman’s fabulous newsletter, where she recently shared a link to an article she wrote for Cosmopolitan magazine. Friedman visited the University of California at Santa Barbara and interviewed twenty-something students about their sexual habits and desires—specifically if they’d been affected by the “Yes Means Yes” law, SB 967, which demands enthusiastic consent from all parties throughout a sexual encounter.

I’d heard of SB 967, but I hadn’t done any real research about it. Unsurprisingly, I discovered a variety of reactions. Some feminists welcome the bill wholeheartedly, while others are trepidatious about its limitations and do not think it does enough to protect victims and their advocates. Read more…

We Never Go Out of Style: Meet the Woman Behind One Direction’s Fashion Choices

Photo: Javierosh

What does it take to make the hottest band in the world look incredible? No one knows better than Caroline Watson. She styles Harry, Liam, Niall, Zayn and Louis–from their X-Factor days to their present fame. Brodie Lancaster interviewed Watson about helping each band member evolve into his signature look, in the glare of the spotlight and in the eyes of the fans.

What was that original concept you pitched?

I had this idea that I wanted them to be like the male equivalent to the Spice Girls, but being kind of cool. When I say “the Spice Girls,” I mean being in a group but having an identity. Everyone wore different things and no two girls looked the same. I wanted to create that with the boys. It was obviously a big Simon Cowell project, but I don’t think anybody knew how much it was going to blow up in the way in which it did. I think the look had a lot to do with that. Because people buy into nice things, you know? And it was my job to make them look great.

Their look really is one of the ways they’ve been set apart from boy bands in the past. One of the things people always say about the band is, like, they might be a boy band, but they’re not all wearing the same thing and walking on a beach.

Yeah, we didn’t want that, I didn’t want that, I didn’t want to work with anybody that wanted to do that. At the beginning I didn’t want them all in black or all in leather—that whole stereotypical boy band thing. When I first started working with them, I had an idea for what I wanted for all the boys: Niall was always going to be my sporty boy; Zayn was always the cool, mysterious one that was quite street but could be quite high fashion at the same time; Harry was bowties, blazers, that guy that you want to bring home to your mum; Liam was the boy next door. I mean, now, Liam’s transitioned and completely grown into this whole new, sexy guy.

It’s always been natural for all the boys as they’ve got older – as with anybody, getting older and knowing this is me, this is what i really want. I love dressing Louis like that, but what I love about him the most is he’s not afraid to turn it up for the red carpet … I love him to pieces and he’s just amazing to dress. They all are, I get such a buzz off them. People are like, “What are you doing in menswear? Why are you doing it for so long?” And it’s because I get a real buzz out of it and I love working with people who appreciate the work that I do. And there’s been such a growth over the years.

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Blueprints & Buildings: Four Stories About Architecture

Photo by John Fowler

1. “The Architect Who Wants to Redesign Being Dead.” (Brendan Kiley, The Stranger, March 2015)

Katrina Spade was struck with the idea of humans turning into compost. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made.

“I don’t want my last gesture as a human being, as I die, to be a big ‘fuck you’ to the earth,” she says. “I’d rather have my last gesture be at the very least benign, or even beneficial. We are full of potential—our bodies are. We have nutrients in us, and there’s no way we should be packed into a box that doesn’t let us go into the earth.”

The Urban Death Project was born. Read more…

So Long, Sweet Briar College

I learned that while some are considering work outside of academia, few have knowledge of how to pursue such opportunities. Even those in the math and sciences—industries generally highlighted as ones poised for immense job growth these days—aren’t sure that their skills will translate to another sector. The school, they say, hasn’t offered them career counseling or transition services… [Assistant professor of math, Camillia Smith Barnes], who was a year away from getting tenure, worries about her current resume; until last week, she felt secure. Like many of the faculty whom I spoke with, Barnes said that she was struggling with shock and debilitating stress. “I started the job search on Tuesday night,” she said. “But on Wednesday, I was too depressed to do anything.” Students and faculty didn’t attend classes last week after hearing the news because they were too emotional to focus on their work, some explained.

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s hard to imagine how any school with such extensive grounds, impressive buildings, and a full staff that educated only a few hundred women could remain financially viable. The restrictions outlined in Sweet Briar’s former missions, wills, and trusts made change all but impossible. Still, as inevitable as it may be, it’s worth acknowledging that the school’s closure has taken an enormous toll on people who’ve devoted their lives to liberal-arts education. And many fear that Sweet Briar serves as a case study for what will play out at similar schools in the coming years.

— On March 3, the president of Sweet Briar College, a historic all-women’s liberal arts school, announced its impending closure. Students and faculty will finish the spring semester, but the school itself may be preserved, parceled out, re-purposed or demolished after that. For Sweet Briar professors, this heralds a time of deep uncertainty in an adjunct-heavy job market, and for some academics, homelessness. Lauren McKenna tells these professors’ stories at The Atlantic.

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‘Something Great is Ending’: On ‘Parks & Recreation’

Photo: Aviva West

“Parks & Recreation” may have begun as a The Office spinoff, but it ended its seventh season on its own delightful, lauded terms. At Uproxx, Ashley Burns and Chloe Schildhause compiled a spoiler-free oral history of “Parks & Recreation,” the biggest little show that could. This one’s for you, Pawnee.

On positive comedy: A lot of comedy seems negative and built on conflict and that stuff can be really funny, but if you look at some shows, sometimes the characters are just mean to each other. So, one of the challenges of Parks and Rec, that I hope we met, was that the characters were friends who had conflicts that were based on personality types and not based on zingers.

On Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope: After the first season we thought that Leslie was going to be more conniving and savvy about politics. But then we realized that just wasn’t a good color on Amy. It seemed better to have someone who was more into doing good with politics and wanting to be a good person in the government and that seemed more fun.

On writer’s room antics: TV writing is such a communal process, and I have much more experience being in a comedy room, and I know that comedy writing is such a communal experience that the writer of that episode definitely has a shape in that first draft, and first jokes and language of that script. But together the final version is a group effort. Always spearheaded by the showrunner, our showrunner being the amazing Mike Schur, who is the funniest, smartest, nicest man, or person, I’ve ever met in the industry. So he is the voice of Parks and Rec and together we all work with him to make that final voice.

On the last day of shooting: We arranged our schedule so that the last scenes were with the entire cast and they were on our set and not a location. We were able to all be together for the last moments of the show. It was very nice and felt very appropriate. The cast was very sad and the producers were very sad, everybody’s really sad. But sad in the best possible way. And we kept reminding ourselves that the fact that we got to be this sad means that we had a really great run. The worst thing in the world would be to shoot the final day of your show and then be like, “Get me the hell out of here.” That would have been a much sadder scenario. So it was all the good kind of sad. That’s an emotion you can deal with, when you realize that the reason you’re sad is because something great is ending.

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I Ship It: Six Stories About Fanfiction

Photo: Karen Roe

OTP: You and this reading list. I’ve wanted to share writing about fanfiction for some time. Fanfiction is often ridiculed (Why can’t the authors keep from inserting themselves into the story? Why is everyone having sex? Why does 50 Shades of Grey exist?!), but it’s a legitimate creative outlet. Fanfiction has played a small but significant role in my own life, and I’ll elaborate in my list. If you’re totally lost right now, check out Vulture’s beautiful, if patchy, primer (#3 on this list), and then plunge into these funny, fascinating stories about the world of fanfiction.

1. “Stories are Waves.” (Michelle Nijhuis, Aeon, July 2014)

I love–love–this essay from Aeon about a mother who gender-bends classic characters (meet Girl Bilbo!) at her daughter’s request. It’s advocacy for diversity and equality in literature, as well as the power of seeing yourself in a story–which fanfiction often provides. Read more…