Category: Two Cents

  • A Young Writer’s Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin

    Written by Carolina Eleni Theodoropoulos Ursula K. Le Guin came into my life at the most formative time—not childhood or adolescence, but when I began to take writing seriously: in college. My first creative writing professor urged us to draw maps of our stories; “if you can’t visualize the space your characters inhabit, how will…

  • How Fiction Does Not Exist In A Vacuum

    By Morgan Southworth A couple of weeks ago, a LitHub article discussed the pros and cons of “Why It’s Ok to Reuse, Repurpose, and Recycle Fiction.” The article specifically focused on Sadia Shepard’s recently published short story “Foreign-Returned,” which plucks clear elements from Mavis Gallant’s 1963 short story “The Ice Wagon Going down the Street.”…

  • Girls Own the Void, and What Lies Beyond

    Written by Kylie Warkentin I read Lynn Steger Strong’s piece, “Why I Wanted to Write About Anger,” on my phone in the small, suffocating apartment my grandmother owns. It feels less like a piece about anger, and more like what would result from a swell of resentment bitten off at the start once you’ve reminded…

  • Why Musicals Can’t Keep Their Hands Off of Literature

    Written by Kevin LaTorre Sunday afternoon in the B. Iden Payne Theatre, UT’s Theatre and Dance Department closed The Drowsy Chaperone, its farcical tribute to musical theatre. To the south, across the bridge, the ZACH Theatre continues its run of the musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol until December 31. Live musicals are enduring flights…

  • Works By Gillian Flynn, Ranked In Order Of How Gross I Felt After Reading Them

    Written by Kylie Warkentin  The Grownup The Grownup only had me reaching for the nearest bottle of hand sanitizer after I finished reading, which is a big step up from most of Gillian Flynn’s works. The Grownup tells the tale of a sex-working palm reader and mousy divorced mother with a slightly-off child. There was…

  • Art, Addiction, and Remembering to Write

    Written by Katelyn Connolly In her Twitter bio, Hope Ewing describes herself as a “drink pusher, writer. Not necessarily in that order.” Fittingly, in a recent article written for Literary Hub, she explores the relationship between art and alcohol abuse, an issue that hits close to home for many artists and members of creative communities.…

  • The Importance of Generating Compassion as a Fiction Writer: Karen Shepard at the Texas Book Festival

    Written by Carolina Eleni Theodoropoulos A couple of weekends ago at the Texas Book Festival, Karen Shepard presented her new collection, Kiss Me Someone, while in conversation with Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! Shepard spoke heavily about the responsibility she feels as a writer to cultivate compassion for characters that sometimes appear monstrous.

  • Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel Prize, and Some Advice About Ploughing On

    Written by Delia Davis  On Thursday, the Swedish Academy awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature to Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. “In novels of great emotional force,” wrote the academy, Ishiguro “has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” Ishiguro’s oeuvre includes novels, screenplays, short stories, and even lyrics. Some of his more prominent…