My book is a memoir that takes a juvenile look at clinical depression using fart jokes

and literary references; essentially, I can't keep a straight face even when I'm thinking about killing myself. The project has the working title "A Bunch of Stupid Shit That Saved My Life." Its chapter titles are a list of things your doctor probably wouldn't prescribe for depression, such as Being in a Shitty Band, Wanting to Be More Like A Fennel Plant, and Talking to Myself. They are all somewhat misleading excuses for me to tell some other tangentially related story, especially this one.

PostedJuly 31, 2013

AuthorGuest User

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My oldest daughter, Xenia, has been obsessed with Greek Mythology since she discovered the origins of her name.

The literal translation means "guest-friendship" and comes from ancient Greece, where hospitality and kindness were regularly offered to visitors or anyone traveling through a village. The Greeks believed that the Gods mingled with the common people and offering kindness to strangers was one way to make an offering to the divine beings. One could never be certain about the presence or absence of the divine.

PostedJuly 31, 2013

AuthorGuest User

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As a child, gazing at the stars and thumbing through National Geographic always provided a necessary

escape from an unwavering sensation of being trapped. Trapped by less-than-favorable circumstances in my family, trapped by being constantly teased at school, trapped by my own small yet rapidly obsessive and chattering mind. After the magazine's stories of far-away people and habitats and scientific space material had been devoured, I'd sprawl across a sleeping bag in the dry summer lawn of my rural childhood home, staring up at the vast sky with its pinpricks of stars, streaming satellites and meteors streaking through the atmosphere. Attempting to comprehend just how far away, and just how old, the stars were unraveled everything inside of me in the best of ways.

PostedApril 19, 2013

AuthorGuest User

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TagsSTEAM

Sometimes the best experts on any given subject are not what people imagine.

Not all researches adorn themselves in white lab coats and speak in code. They don't necessarily hold PhDs in the topics they cover. They maybe haven't spent their entire lives conducting research on, say, prehistoric mating practices of arachnids. Some of these DIY experts are simply thrown into their fields of expertise by accident. Most have rare and insatiable curiosities for the odd or unexplored. One such expert in the field of science writing is award-winning science author, Mary Roach.

PostedApril 19, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWho

TagsSTEAM

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Mac Barnett’s picture books are as varied in style as they are playful and imaginative.

Barnett lists opera, theatre, ballet, and cinema as influences, and brings a knowing theatricality to his own readings. But even apart from the highly recommended experience of witnessing Barnett read, the pages of his books spill over with an enthusiasm for the intersection of written and visual media that bridges the chasms of age, genre, and attention span.

PostedJanuary 8, 2013

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWho

TagsDavid Foster Wallace, Career, Writing, Literature, Picture Books, Mac Barnett

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Gail Carriger’s name is frequently appended by less formal titles

than those claimed by her Victorian characters. She’s been aptly described as Gail Carriger: New York Times bestselling author in PR material and, among speculative fiction fans, her name is commonly associated with Steampunk, Teapunk, Mannerspunk and a number of other subgenre descriptors that try (and fail) to put her work into a single category. Aside from the various handles ascribed to Carriger as the popular contemporary writer behind the Parasol Protectorate series, she can also claim Masters degrees in both Archaeology and Anthropology, two disciplines that make her uniquely qualified to make a career of refashioning a bygone era, telling new and fantastic stories about manners, machines, and empire making in the bargain. Her next book, Etiquette and Espionage, will be out in February.

PostedJanuary 8, 2013

AuthorGuest User

TagsCareer, Writing, Literature, Feminism, Gail Carriger, Curiosity

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WRITING IS AN ALMOST SISYPHEAN TASK: PUSHING THE BOULDER OF

narrative up the ever-steepening slope of countless sentences and paragraphs, only to start over— revising, replacing, and deleting the product of previous climbs, always eyeing the horizon line of clear, engaging, well honed prose. For me personally, I marvel at the fact that books are ever completed at all and, given the opportunity to interview a prolific and talented author like Jane Smiley, my first thought was: "how does she do it?" Part of the answer, is that Smiley keeps at it on an almost daily basis and the results are formidable: her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has contributed to a wide range of well respected magazines, including The New Yorker, Elle, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper's. Her most recent novel is Private Life.

PostedSeptember 25, 2012

AuthorGuest User

CategoriesWho

TagsCareer, Literature, Writing, Word Up, Jane Smiley, Curiosity

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It was a shock to the nation, and the world, when former

astronaut Sally Ride passed away in July of 2012. 61 is far too young for anyone to die. What is remarkable about Sally Ride is how much she packed into that life. Like many people around the world, I first saw Sally Ride on the TV news when I was a kid. It was big news. The Soviet Union had launched a woman into space two decades earlier, but when Sally flew on the space shuttle in 1983 the achievement felt brand new. NASA’s astronauts before that flight had all been white men, mostly with test pilot backgrounds. It was easy to mistake one for another. To see a woman on television floating inside the space shuttle gave the space program an entirely new face. This new space vehicle was for everyone, I understood.

PostedSeptember 25, 2012

AuthorGuest User

Cave In

My book is a memoir that takes a juvenile look at clinical depression using fart jokes

Magic Markers Part 2

My oldest daughter, Xenia, has been obsessed with Greek Mythology since she discovered the origins of her name.

Magic Markers

As a child, gazing at the stars and thumbing through National Geographic always provided a necessary

Gulping Roach

Sometimes the best experts on any given subject are not what people imagine.

Picture Bookish: Mac Barnett Q and A

Mac Barnett’s picture books are as varied in style as they are playful and imaginative.

Fangs, Fur, and Feminism Gail Carriger’s Bloody Victorianism (Q and A)

Gail Carriger’s name is frequently appended by less formal titles

Private Life Of Writing

WRITING IS AN ALMOST SISYPHEAN TASK: PUSHING THE BOULDER OF

Mission Possible (How Sally Ride Brought Science Down to Earth)

It was a shock to the nation, and the world, when former

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