November 2006
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Although the word “race” carries significance in the realm of sociology, it has none in human biology. Compare humans in Nairobi to those Stockholm: you’ll notice differences, of course, but they will be either culturally significant or biologically trivial. No supposedly “racial” traits cluster together in a meaningful way.
by
Barbara J. King
Edward M. Hallowell adds that missing out on books as a child can have unexpected benefits. When he admitted to a college professor that he had not yet read a classic book, he anticipated being criticized. Instead, he was surprised and invigorated by his teacher's response: "Aren't you lucky. What enormous pleasures you have in store for you someday."
by
Patricia Kenet
"I didn’t want to back away from inside his mind, because that’s the way he thinks. I probably could have gotten a publisher if I’d whitewashed it and sanitized it, but to me this is the way Hazen thinks. I don’t have to sell books. I don’t have to have a big writing career, but I do have to speak my truth and I didn’t want to Pollyanna him to get published."
by
Amanda Witherell
"Habitually, adults see large swaths of their childhoods through the lenses of nostalgia. For authors who decide to revisit classic stories with their own tales, there is often an unprecedented backlash from readers and critics. Lately though I have noticed almost a renaissance of this sort of writing. What’s different this time is the challenge the authors are giving the originals -- the bold move to make the stories updated, modern and highly readable to contemporary readers."
by
Colleen Mondor
"I have tried to make a serious book and all of that. I just become completely pathetic. I lose my sense of humor and I write badly. I sit down, and I say to myself, "Now you have to make a masterpiece!" And of course I make shit. The second you say to yourself you should make a masterpiece is the best way to make the biggest shit in your life."
by
John Zuarino
"My life is generally always problematic. I have a wonderful ability to make my life problematic even when perhaps from the outside it shouldn’t be. In that sense I’m always receptive to works of art -- but I guess I did reach a stage in middle age -- I’m now 36 -- I realized certain problems don’t really go away ever. When I was younger I thought that all problems of my life could eventually be sorted out with effort."
by
Joanne McNeil
In the immortal words of Patti Smith, the androgynous rock god cum Michigan housewife cum androgynous rock god, "Frankly, being any gender is a drag."
by
Heather Smith
"As I was reading these women’s magazines, I had the thought that if I had been reading more women’s magazines I would really know how to accessorize better. I guess one of the reasons I can’t have the pose of giving advice is I’m writing about things that are dilemmas to me. I’m figuring them out on the page as well and figuring them out where the argument goes. It’s kind of a dual thing, I’m writing both in a theoretical intellectual way with a distance, and I’m also engaged in all of these things in my own life."
by
Jessa Crispin
Yet as anyone knows who’s been hyped on a conference high, the real rush comes not during formal presentations but at meals or during walks when unexpected connections are forged. In this way I met Anne Foerst, who brings together theology and science in one person, and who rivets her conversational partners by offering verbal gems on topics as disparate as the nature of Jesus’s bodily processes and how an understanding of AI (artificial intelligence) might fight racism.
by
Barbara J. King
"It's much more difficult for me to talk about the sacred and secret elements of Mormonism than you'd think, very hard to turn off the Mormon self-censor, and I think a good part of the intensity of certain scenes in The Open Curtain come from that: I've had to go through an internal struggle to get where I get to on the page, the stakes of which are very high."
by
Angela Stubbs
"I think fiction and poetry should mate and have wild-eyed babies. Not everyone does. Salman Rushdie once said that we could, if we tried, give every word in a novel the same weight of meaning it has in a poem -- that's what I try to do."
by
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
I had been on hunting for letters by women to flesh out my PhD on seduction in the eighteenth century. I was particularly interested in finding letters by women who had been seduced. But after weeks of reading dreary, decorous letters by Georgian women, I was ready to give up. Did they never feel strong emotion about anything? Then, I came across a letter by Emma. The discovery, quite literally, transformed my life.
by
Kate Williams
