Looking at the lives of Juilliard graduates, ten years out.
Quotes
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Searching for Meaning Inside a Tech Company’s First Bookstore
University Book Store—begun by students in 1900—is just up the road from University Village, and while they serve superficially different markets, it’s difficult not to see Amazon’s choice of location as yet another act of aggression toward indie bookstores, whose owners and employees are particularly suspicious of the company’s motives. Speaking over her reading-stack-as-topography desk […]
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
‘Don’t You Write Anything Happy?’: Chinelo Okparanta on Learning from Public Readings
Once, I did a reading in New York where an older lady came up to me afterwards and said, “Your writing is beautiful, and there’s no doubt you’re a great writer, but I’m sorry I won’t be reading any more of that story. That was just too painful for me.” Then, a year or two […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Surveying Sin in American Music
What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Irish Women Forced to Travel for Abortions
As parts of the United States tighten their legislation against women’s reproductive rights, Northern Ireland comes to mind.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Exorcism and the Catholic Church
Dan Shewan writes about the business of exorcism for Pacific Standard.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Musical Genius Is a Gendered Idea
But really, what is a musician’s voice if not distinctive? Isn’t that… good? Entire pieces have been written about the voices of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, so American and vital and wise in their manly scratchiness, like unshaved bristle and whiskey and dirt. Man voice make music good. Woman voice music bad: Too high. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Early Days of Midnight Movies
Prior to the ’70s, midnight shows were the realm of the occasional horror release and exploitation distributors who used the slot to attract night owls to seedy fare. But the midnight movie as we know it — as a Friday- and Saturday-night staple featuring cult films — came into its own as the ’60s turned […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Life of a Teen Beauty Pageant Host
Has Zak Slemmer found his calling? He’s not sure.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
If You Want to Be Productive, You Have to Rest
In a recent thought-provoking review of research on the default mode network, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang of the University of Southern California and her co-authors argue that when we are resting the brain is anything but idle and that, far from being purposeless or unproductive, downtime is in fact essential to mental processes that affirm our […]