Tag: Stephanie Pickrell

  • Hothouse Writers’ Wintertime Literary Escapes

    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…

  • Reconciling Our Desire to Define: Canon, Copyright, and Creativity

    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,…

  • Stories 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…

  • Curl Up with This and Break Free: How the Hothouse Staff Escapes Stress

    As you know from the many opening lines in the many emails  you’ve received, the world is a confusing and often-frightening place to live in right now. In the long tradition of turning towards stories to temporarily escape the chaos around us, the Hothouse staff has compiled some of our favorite works that provide us…

  • What Starts Here Changes the World-Building: The Forty Acres across Genres

    Written by Stephanie Pickrell Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Or perhaps write an ode to a nightingale? Or maybe even reminisce about walking through an endless sea of daffodils? Poets throughout the ages are notorious for waxing sentimental about the natural scenery around them, but depending on where you live, sufficiently beautiful…

  • Lessons in (Im)mortality: What We Can Learn from Vampires

    Written by Stephanie Pickrell Think, for a moment, of a vampire. Consider the young woman languishing across a couch, neck bared, and the tall, pale figure lingering over her, lips bathed a bright, delicious red. Or the creature hovering outside the sweeping balcony windows, silhouetted by the soft glow of moonlight, with a face as…

  • Black Creative Greatness: Hothouse Staff Picks to Celebrate Black History Month

    Julia Schoos, Editor-in-Chief  “Voice of Freedom” by Phillis Wheatley I was first introduced to Phillis Wheatley in our very own Dr. Woodard’s class on African American Literature Through the Harlem Renaissance. While certainly not a contemporary black author, Wheatley more than deserves recognition during Black History Month. A young girl enslaved in Boston, she utilized…

  • The Four Letter Word: Unspoken Ways the Website Staff of Hothouse Shows Love

    This Valentine’s Day,  Hothouse’s website staff decided to rebel against cynicism and scorn commodification—they wrote about the different ways they experience love. From a wedding to a quinceañera, read on to discover how love appears (in all its forms!) to each website writer. Christie Basson, Website Editor: This photo is from my parents’ wedding day…

  • What If We Could Define Science Fiction?

    The science fiction genre has struggled with its own definition since its beginning. It encompasses everything from intergalactic space battles to horrifying dystopias, and even science fiction writers themselves disagree on exactly what it means to write sci-fi.

  • How Uncanny: Chilling Gothics to Disturb the Ordinary

    This spooky season, we asked our website staff members to come up with their own Gothic styles! Like Southern Gothic before us, each staff member took a place or  experience that seems harmless—that is, until you look a little closer.