October Surprise; or, How to Follow a Perfect Season
My grandfather died in St. Louis last year on October eighth. The following night, Chris Carpenter pitched a three-hitter against the Phillies, lifting the Cardinals into the NLCS and alerting the...
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Special Effects
Sharia law goes to the movies. From a District 9 poster, 2009. In 2009, halfway through my second deployment as an infantryman in Iraq, I was made company armorer. Instead of spending days in the...
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Special Effects
We’re away until January 4, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year! From a District 9 poster, 2009. Sharia law goes to the movies. In 2009,...
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What Kind of Name Is That?
How to name your fictional characters. Characters in need of names. To me the most embarrassing part of writing fiction, aside from telling people about it, is naming your characters. Of course, even...
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Five Public Cases
What is poetry for? Page from The Consolation of Philosophy (detail), by Boethius, 1395. Note: Earlier this year, Anthony Madrid began composing quasi-koans on the theme “What is poetry for?” a first...
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It’s Never Too Late to Mock Nixon, and Other News
Philip Guston, Untitled (Poor Richard), 1971, ink on paper, 10 1/2″ x 13 7/8″. © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth. “I do nothing professionally, I do everything for fun,”...
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What Kind of Name Is That?
We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday! Characters in need of names. How to name your fictional characters. To me the most...
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The Questionable History of the Future
Many centuries ago, as history was being developed and before there was an idea of what prehistoric humans were like, societies generally imagined themselves to be of divine origin and to have...
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An Interview with Julián Herbert and Christina MacSweeney
Julián Herbert began the book that made him famous while he was sitting in his mother’s hospital room. She was dying of leukemia, and as he cared for her, he wrote what became one of the most...
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Hero’s Journey: An Interview with Taylor Mac
Taylor Mac in act 7 of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, 2016. Photo: Teddy Wolff. In October 2016, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, the theater artist Taylor...
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