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Your Guide to the 2016 Tony Awards
June 8th, 2016
The 70th annual Tony Awards will air on Sunday, June 12 at 8/7c, live on CBS and will be broadcast to four continents. James Corden is hosting this year and presenters include: Barbra Streisand (her first appearance at the awards since 1970), Oprah Winfrey, Cate Blanchett, Steve Martin, Carole King, and Audra McDonald. This Broadway season featured a slew of powerful, diverse, and moving new and revival productions. Here's a rundown of what's up for Best and Revival Plays and Musicals.
Read Column →Library Love: Incunabula – Dracula’s Bookshelf
June 7th, 2016
Header image via Royal Collection Trust Vlad Dracula, also known as the Impaler (1431-1476), was a regular guy who was also a warlord and three-time prince of Wallachia, a region of modern Romania.
Read Column →Three Books About... Junkies
June 6th, 2016
The war on drugs, a battle which had fitfully sputtered in a series of minor conflicts since around 1914, finally roared into life in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson, alarmed by the Summer of Love and anxious to distract an increasingly anxious population from the war in Vietnam, decided to bolster his appeal with Middle America by cracking down on illegal drug use. To justify this use of resources and manpower, he needed a shroud to shake at potential voters — a dreadful warning about what would happen if he didn’t act.
Read Column →How Important Is Word Count? 7 Writers Discuss Their Output
June 3rd, 2016
Anyone who’s read my previous columns exploring different facets of the writing life knows how interested I am in writing routines, rituals and habits. This month I’m investigating how much writers write and just how important a daily (or weekly) word count is to each author.
Read Column →10 Sexy-Ass Physical Books
June 3rd, 2016
There's really no other way to describe this list other than "book porn." Okay, I'll try a little harder than that: in an age where the availability and convenience of eBooks makes digital books an ideal option both for publishers and consumers, we have to be reminded every now and then just how intricate, sumptuous, and downright sexy physical books can be. Thus, here are ten books both past and present that more than meet this criteria. Enjoy.
Read Column →Book vs Album: 'Blood Meridian' vs 'The Last Pale Light in the West'
June 2nd, 2016
With the recent news that a Blood Meridian movie is NOT in the works, and the recent news that I'm sad about that, I decided to take a look at a different kind of adaptation. In 1985, Cormac McCarthy published Blood Meridian.
Read Column →Dissembling The Loner: 5 Books About Outsiders and Introverts
June 2nd, 2016
Harper Lee's Boo Radley may take the cake as the most famous loner in literature, but books present the perfect entry into the minds of introverted people. Sometimes, they're the only way a particularly reclusive writer connects with the outside world. What motivates such behavior? Why do loners choose to be alone? They manage to draw our interest through the things that they withhold.
Read Column →What Works & What Doesn't: 'Showgirls'
June 1st, 2016
Welcome once again to What Works & What Doesn't. Last month, we took a look at the dynamics and general criteria of a solid Act I via Terrence Malick's debut feature Badlands. We'll be doing more or less the same for Act II, and this time around, we're going to look at a movie that almost gets it right, but doesn't quite hit the mark.
Read Column →UPDATED WITH WINNER - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: Prince's Poetics Edition
May 31st, 2016
Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess. How It Works We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or prompt. You write a flash fiction piece using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked and awarded a prize.
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