Category: Current Happenings

  • Something in the Way: Unmasking the Literature Behind The Batman

    By: Celeste Hoover He keeps a diary, smudges his eyeliner, and broods around the house to a Nirvana soundtrack. He’s also a blockbusting, crime-fighting, vigilante superhero. Robert Pattinson’s newest iteration of Batman is popular because, well, he’s just really relatable. Like a slightly cooler version of my seventh-grade self, he wears his angst on his…

  • Finding A Respite from The Pandemic in Don DeLillo’s ​Underworld ​

    Written by Abdallah Hussein The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is an unusual, tragic, and (most relevantly) suffocating circumstance. Going into 2020, I was optimistic at the prospect of the undiscovered, but I could never have imagined myself isolated in my home for unearthly amounts of time, knowing one unlucky excursion out my front door could result…

  • Coming Together When The World Falls Apart

    Written by Lindsey Ferris With the songs from the musical Come From Away still playing in my ears, the memories my parents have shared over the years of 9/11 comes to mind and I’m left again in awed silence of how the world responded to the devastation. Working off the baby fat from her last…

  • We Cannot Watch Scottish Gaelic Die

    Written by Abbey Bartz Whenever I meet someone new in Scotland and they hear my tell-tale American accent, they always ask what brought me to Scotland. I tell them that I am studying Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, and, specifically, that I am interested in the Gaelic language and its literature. Their next…

  • On Trying to Fly: Remembering Toni Morrison

    This year, we lost a wonderful and inspiring creator with the death of Toni Morrison on August 5th. If a room full of critics or a shelf of scholarly reviews can’t summarize Toni Morrison’s greatness, then a single article will of course struggle to do her justice. But my reverence and admiration for such a…

  • Lola by Junot Diaz: Reshaping the Children’s Book Industry

    Written by Kiran Gokal Junot Diaz, the Dominican-American author of renowned books This Is How You Lose Her and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, recently released a children’s book called Islandborn which focuses on six-year-old Lola, an Afro-Caribbean girl who came over to the United States so young that she has no memories…

  • Our Bodies, Ourselves—and Our Future, as the Eponymous Publication Announces No New Editions

    Written by Abby Adamo Today we discuss the end of the forty-year run of Our Bodies, Ourselves and what it means for the next generation of women who will grow up without this book updated and in circulation. But first: a story. During my first year of middle school I got a call on my…

  • Brontë Society to Publish Two Lost Charlotte Brontë Manuscripts

    Written by Kendall Talbot I thought I had experienced everything there was to experience regarding the Brontës: I have read all their published work, studied their lives in a class dedicated solely to them, and even made a literary pilgrimage to their home in Haworth (yes, the moors are as bleak and melancholy as Emily…

  • Korean Thriller Novels on the Rise: Overturning the Scandinavian Reign

    Written by Kiran Gokal With the phenomenon of Oldboy and the recent popularity of Train to Busan, Korean cinema has established its position high in the crime thriller genre, creating a new generation of widely praised films. When I think of Korean thriller films, I think of action-packed films balanced with drama, comedy, and beautifully…

  • The Economics and Humanity of Instagram Poetry

    Written by Caitlin Smith Love her or hate, her, Rupi Kaur’s impact on the poetry world is undeniable. When first starting out, Kaur only posted to her Instagram account, but now has two published books under her belt: Milk and Honey (2015) and The Sun and Her Flowers (2017). Her poetry has sparked controversy among…

  • Sensitivity Reading Reinforces and Encourages a More Diverse and Aware Publishing Process

    Written by Kiran Gokal With the growing awareness of diversity in books, and more importantly, accurate representations, the need for sensitivity readers has grown substantially. A sensitivity reader is pretty much exactly what you hear: they are readers who read to minimize sensitivity. The practice is done on a manuscript to eradicate any internalized bias,…

  • Biopics, Assassins, and Abortion Rights top this Year’s Black List of Unproduced Screenplays

    Written by Dan Kolinko A rookie Marine gets stranded on a hostile planet during humanity’s space colonization as her suit runs out of power; two families escape over the Berlin Wall in a hot air balloon; a sociopath fights her way to the top of the fitness world with no broken bones spared; and a man…