Wandering the aisles of my neighborhood supermarket, the kind of place Don DeLillo once wrote evoked “a sense of replenishment … and fullness of being,” I tread cautiously out of suspicion and respect for the potential “airborne toxic event” that is the coronavirus pandemic. As the world continues to pass milestones of Covid infections, I…
Category: 20th Century
Back Home in Old Kentucky – Bailey Vandiver
Kentucky governor Happy Chandler once said Kentuckians are always either coming home or thinking about coming home. On the day that tornadoes devastated my home state, I was longing to be home. It was December 11, 2021, and I woke up in a New York City hotel room to the news that tornadoes had ripped…
Mick Jagger Used to Call Me Mum – Jacqueline Ellis
When I was little, the dark staircase between the front and back rooms of my grandparents’ two-up, two-down terrace house had been a mountain. Each step a jagged, granite foothold; the shadowed landing a dark cloud hiding a kingdom of giants, or a castle encased in twisted branches. Their bedroom glowed yellow; the edges of…
Community and Creativity in New York in Patti Smith’s Just Kids – Jasmine Choice
The prolific New York art scene gained momentum in the 1950s through the subversive Beat movement and the experimental first-generation New York School of poets. Both celebrated community and were integral in inaugurating a defiance of the mainstream and the innovation of art as collaborative. These artistic coteries shared geographical proximity; personal relationships; and similar…
Lemons – Victory Witherkeigh
“You made it, Grandma!” I said as I gave her a hug. The gold tassel swished in my face from the graduation cap I hadn’t removed yet. “I’ve been to all your graduations, Iha,” she replied in a huff, “And, I’ll be at the next one.” I gripped her hand as she steadied herself with…
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them: Managing Isolation and Becoming the Fabric of a Place – Joanna Mason
January and the New Year are often dreaded in their insistence that we look back on what we have achieved, or what we meant to. This year, the looming of March feels the same, with its marking of the anniversary of the initial lockdown. It is easy to be hard on the progress you have…
My Unsung Sheroes – Susan Moon
Just a spoonful satisfyingly sears on the way down, tickling all the microvilli on its magic school bus trip through the body. A taste so tangy, a flavor so fearless. Anything but diluted, the way I’d always told myself to be.
Ezra Pound: Prototypical Beat? – Michael Washburn
We today tend to remember Ezra Pound (1885-1972) for the immense density and erudition of his work. Pound’s many preoccupations included Confucius, medieval China, Bertrand de Born, the Provençal period, ancient Egypt, the beauty of the Farsi tongue, and his fellow early twentieth-century modernists. Of course, we also remember many unpleasant things about the man,…
Choice Feminism and Imagination: the representation of women in Disney – Beth O’Brien
The concept of choice feminism operates under the principle that any decision made by a woman has the potential to be a feminist choice, so long as it was made with political consciousness.[1] However, the political and social theorist, Steven Lukes, argues that an individual’s actions are guided by what they can imagine to…
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY – 8 posts by inspiring women
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we have collated eight of our most accessed posts by women.
Killer (non)fictions: Is true crime miscommunicating truths in favour of entertaining audiences? – C.S. Barnes
C.S. Barnes is a Worcester-based author and academic. She lectures in Creative Writing and English literature at various universities around the West Midlands, and her research background lies in representations of women in crime fiction. She also writes fiction and her work is published by Bloodhound Books. . True crime, by its very titling, leads…
SHORT STORY – Tamara Lazaroff
My grandfather who was not gay was born in 1930 in Seville, Andalusia. He worked as an itinerant labourer for the señoritos, the rich landlords, tending their olive trees and their domesticated animals.
Porridge 