Tag: women

‘The Writing Retreat’ by Julia Bartz – Book Review

The Writing Retreat could have been a decent little thriller, and there’s definitely glimmers in here of a better book under the overwhelming amount of baggage that comes packed in the 400 or so pages this one operates with. Between the angst-filled characters, the laborious pace, and the generous helping of the ludicrously incredulous, this […]

A Devastating Tale of War, a Tender Story of Love

The counterintuitive truth about “the love that dare not speak its name” — a late-19th-century term of art for love between men — is that precluding the name “homosexuality,” it was allowed to be quite loud: It was sung, written, verified and moaned about everywhere, from retellings of classical myths to the dormitories of the […]

Torch Literary Arts seeks to light the path for Black women writers

Gathered in a Zoom workshop, a group of Black women writers had the opportunity to do some “digging into that honesty box,” as presenter Ebony Stewart put it. Part of that exploration of honesty meant looking their imposter syndrome — or feeling of fraudulence and self-doubt — in the eye. “Self-sabotaging your greatness because you […]

In Her Last Book, Valerie Boyd Amplifies the Voices of Black Writers

To say that Valerie Boyd was a critically acclaimed writer, editor and educator doesn’t do her justice. And when she passed away in February at age 58 after a five-year battle with pancreatic cancer, she left behind an incredible legacy. “Wrapped in Rainbows,” Valerie Boyd’s biography of Zora Neale Hurston, is considered one of the […]

Exchange Exemplar: Visiting with the women of the natural world in ‘Writing Wild’

You can probably tick off the names of famous people who got us thinking about nature: John Muir and Aldo Leopold and more. But they’re not all men; Rachel Carson made a huge stir with Silent Spring, and quite possibly changed the course of environmental protection in America. We stick with the women in an […]

Julie Powell Took Food Writing to a Franker, Darker Place

At the end of the year that Julie Powell spent cooking every recipe (more or less) from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” she came to mayonnaise collée. It is a hand-whisked mayonnaise thickened with gelatin — a kind of stiff, salty garnish that was piped decoratively over aspics and the like in […]

She-Hulk’s Writers Loved Trolling the Marvel Show’s ‘Unoriginal’ Critics

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law star Tatiana Maslany says the show’s writers loved having the chance to troll the show’s most “unoriginal” detractors. In an interview with Variety , Maslany shared that head writer Jessica Gao knew from the outset how a certain sector of Marvel fans would view Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk as a woman supposedly invading […]

Dear Craig Finn: here are some women writers you should read.

Craig Finn is the lead singer of a band called The Hold Steady and I have always loved his songwriting. Finn is something like a poet laureate of Midwestern malaise, extracting tragicomic pathos from a particular kind of exurban fuckery that speaks to my southern Ontario upbringing. So many of Finn’s songs are like perfectly […]

‘A theatre of ideas’: Bringing Ukrainian writers to the world

‘This programme is an act of defiance, a challenge to those who would curtail free expression and the tolerant exchange of ideas, and a catalyst for global change’. As Ukraine’s sportsmen and women have already demonstrated over the past seven months with their inspirational performances at various international events, there’s more than one way to […]

The Decades-Long Story Behind Writing Tracy Flick

Click here to view original web page at The Decades-Long Story Behind Writing Tracy Flick Tom Perrotta revisits his cult character and looks back on the ’90s feminism that made her. Paramount Pictures / Alamy; The Atlantic In the dark 1999 comedy Election , the overachieving student Tracy Flick—played by an up-and-coming Reese Witherspoon—dreams of […]