Literary Journal
By Summaiya Jafri Who would have thought a nerdy kid from Queens could reach such unfathomable “heights”? According to research conducted by British retailer Game, The Amazing Spider-Man is the most popular superhero in fifty-seven countries, making him the world’s favorite comic book character by a long shot. What makes Spider-Man so appealing to audiences…
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By Morgan Jeitler On my copy of Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen is a review by Karen Russell: “Pity the poor librarians who have to slap a sticker on Kelly Link’s genre-bending, mind-blowing masterpiece of the imagination.” Pity, too, the librarians of Karen Russell. Karen Russell and Kelly Link are writers who continually defy genre.…
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With Freedom of Information day next week, and some recent Texas-school book banning, we asked the Hothouse Website writers to recall books that they had been banned from reading—and everything they did to eventually read those books. Megan Snopik In middle school, in typical future-English-major fashion, I was obsessed with reading “the classics” (you know,…
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By Celeste Hoover The beginning of this semester came all too quickly for me. Soon after the announcement of two weeks in online class, I found myself on a bleak, empty campus. The precaution was necessary, yet, with little open and very few students returning, I inevitably had lots of free time. In my endless…
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By Jack Gross When you try to put it in words it doesn’t sound like anything special. But if you see it with your own eyes for ten or twenty minutes (almost without thinking, she kept on performing it) gradually the sense of reality is sucked right out of everything around you. It’s a very…
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by Lana Haffar The Megabus is always freezing. The frigid air conditioning strikes you as soon as you climb the top step. You shuffle sideways toward the back, and if you’re my height, you smack your head on the overhead bin before settling into your seat. A stranger makes their way down the narrow aisle,…
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By Kara Hildebrand A literary trope is something repeated so often it borders on cliché: the mad scientist, the forbidden romance, the antihero, the tragic backstory. Perhaps it’s just natural for certain repetitions to become cemented in our literary canon, or perhaps there’s something more to why we identify with tropes enough to reuse them.…
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By Medha Anoo I have been taught Shakespeare’s work by instructors both in the United States and across the globe in India. He is a central figure in the Anglophone literature education of anybody, but the first time I remember getting excited about his work—really excited, like the way I felt when I pre-ordered Rick…
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by Gerardo Garcia I was on the phone one night with someone I knew I wouldn’t marry, and as she hastily came up with a reason to hang up, I realized I had lost myself. I had been suppressing the urge to throw myself at her feet; every third thought was her. I was also…
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Harmony Moura Burk Every Sunday, three old women gather in the kitchen, chattering about the latest church scandal. They’ve turned it into a ritual over the years, laying out secrets like they layout tea sets and cakes. Their mothers did the same thing, and their grandmothers, and their great grandmothers. The table is set, the…
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We asked our website writers what their favorite way to curl up with a book is and for any titles that sparked that cozy-warm-holiday-feeling we all know and love. Read below for some ideal wintery-reading-respites and have a very merry holiday season! Stephanie Pickrell My grandmother’s house no longer exists as I remember it, but…
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By Lana Haffar Odin’s ears never stood up like a German Shepherd’s should. His cartilage was weak, so they sprawled from either side of his head, like wings. The force of every heartbeat made them flutter. He bounded everywhere, tongue lolling, paws spread to cushion the impact. On a November Wednesday, I turned twenty years…
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