by Stephanie Pickrell As a writer and an English major, the word “canon” is my biggest pet peeve. Not the kind of canon that determines which books are considered among the “great works” of a genre (although who decided that, anyway?), but the kind found most often in fanfiction forums. It’s a relatively new word,…
Read More4,000 Years of Women’s Writing: Celebrating Women’s Month By Studying The Words Of The Authors Before Us
by Christie Basson These quotes are meant to encourage, uplift, and celebrate women today by remembering the generations who came and wrote before us. Spanning more than four thousand years, these words have traveled time and space to find us, penned by individuals who have experienced every walk of life. Written by women of all…
Read MoreLiving By The Words of Black Creators: Hothouse Staff Quotes Their Favorite Lines
“Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.” from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by…
Read MoreA Feminist With A Room of Her Own Revisits Virginia Woolf
by Megan Snopik In Virginia Woolf’s famous essay, A Room of One’s Own, she attempts – in preparation of two lectures intended for female college students – to answer why, as of 1929, there have not been as many great female writers as male. Praised in its second-wave feminist heyday, this essay was crucial to…
Read MoreStories of Love and Loss from Literary History
This Valentine’s Day, we asked our website writers to contribute the real-life love stories of those who write literature. Whether it’s a tale of happily ever after or heartbreaking rejection, read on to discover some of the romantic adventures of the authors we still read today. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scotty Villhard In the novel The Great…
Read MoreOf All the Gin Joints: Literary Coincidence And The Wondrous Entanglement
by Scotty Villhard I’m about to spoil Station Eleven, Casablanca, Dracula, and The Importance of Being Earnest for you, so if you don’t want that to happen, go read Station Eleven (and those other ones too, I guess). My fascination with literary coincidences began in June of 2020. It had been a while since I…
Read MoreHoliday Cheer From Hothouse Writers
We asked our website staff to contribute writing inspired by the holiday season and the things they celebrate this time of year. Using different forms of art, music, and literature as inspiration, they have created short works of fiction to spark your holiday imagination. From our staff to you, happy holidays! Christie Basson: Here. This…
Read MoreLike, Read, and Subscribe, Please! : The Promise of Transmedia Storytelling
Written by Skylar Epstein The year is 2012 and Joss Whedon’s Avengers just came out. You, as an avid comic reader, go into the theater wielding comparisons to the comics, ready and willing to fill in the backstory of each character for your less informed friends. Then it’s 2013, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, a spin-off…
Read MoreFinding 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…
Read More#Relationshipgoals: Do Darcy and Elizabeth Pass The Vibe Check?
Written by Megan Snopik While the countless spin offs of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) range from zombie movies to raunchy fanfictions, the original conception of its hero, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, made a young girl’s romantic dreams take shape (or at least they did for this writer). The struggle, however, of reading Austen’s work…
Read MoreOral Storytelling in Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Written by Scotty Villhard After a hard-fought battle, the five companions share a moment for their fallen friend, Usk, a lizard-folk who once roamed the swamplands. Roska, the half-dwarf-half-orc freedom fighter, says a prayer to the gods of her fathers. Od, a fishman exiled from his home, remembers the night his family went missing, while…
Read MoreOctober Shivers: Creepy Content from the Hothouse Staff
We asked our staff to contribute their favourite spooky works – from the ones that scare them out of their shoes to the ones that remind them of the thrills of childhood Halloweens. Below you’ll find content ranging from the outright horrendous to the slightly shiver-inducing. NBC’s Hannibal Kylie Warkentin, Editor-in-Chief As a noted wimp…
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