Columns

'Orange Is The New Black' and the Downgraded Protagonist

August 5th, 2015

In 2010, Spiegel and Brau published a memoir by Piper Kerman called Orange Is The New Black. The book detailed Piper's thirteen months spent in a women's correctional facility for her brief involvement in a drug smuggling and money laundering gang ten years prior. While the narrative stuck mostly to Piper's own experiences in prison, her ultimate goal was to shed light on the deeply flawed prison system in America. Since the book was a bestseller, it can be said that goal was more or less accomplished.

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Welcome to the Suicide Squad

August 3rd, 2015

By now you have no doubt been deafened by the infinite squees of a billion fans reacting to the “leaked” trailer for Suicide Squad. If you watched it and merely wondered why everyone was so excited about this new Will Smith picture, this is a brief intro to the comics and characters the movie is based on. The titular squad is a black-bag strike force composed of captive supervillains compelled into the government’s service.

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UPDATED WITH WINNER - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: July Edition

July 31st, 2015

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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Culling the Poetry Classics: Langston Hughes

July 31st, 2015

It's very difficult to cover the truly immense scope of the poetic world and its rich history through a kinda-monthly-but-let's-be-real-bimonthly column. It's even harder when I'm an American who only reads in English and who only went to American schools and who really was only ever actively taught the Great White Males of Literature with a smattering of Great White Females of Literature thrown in every so often.

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8 Great Podcasts for Writers

July 31st, 2015

Walk into any convention and one out of three attendees will tell you they run their own podcast. The other two will tell you they’ve thought about starting one. You hear the same thing with writers who would totally write a novel that would obviously become a bestseller, if only they had the darn time. Everything always seems easy until you actually try it. Podcasts are no different. They’re a lot of work and most of them aren’t very good. But some are pretty excellent. In this article I’ve tried to collect the best podcasts around that benefit writers.

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Product Review: Weebly

July 30th, 2015

We writers need an easy way to maintain a presence online, and a simple, good-looking website is key. There are a ton of template-based website builders on the market right now, with perhaps the two most popular being Wordpress and SquareSpace. But there's a little guy you may not have heard of that sports some chops equal to the big two above, with a free service plan that offers quite a bit of flexibility.

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5 Grammar Rules That Make No Effing Sense

July 30th, 2015

I love grammar. I love rules. I like to debate punctuation with total strangers and inanimate objects. But that doesn't mean I agree with all the grammar rules that are out there. I have been teaching a grammar class for 3 years now, and one of the most common complaints I get is that the rules people have learned have no context or are based on antiquated practices.

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The GRE Literature Subject Test: What You Need to Know

July 29th, 2015

You’ve decided to go to graduate school for English, welcome to the club!  Unfortunately, the GRE general test is required in order to apply to the vast majority of English departments in the United States, and the Literature in English test is required by 41.5% of those departments. But why do departments require the subject test? What’s on the exam? How do you study for a test like that? Well, I’m currently studying for said dreaded exam and I am here to help, or at least illuminate a bit.

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Why The F*ck Aren’t You Reading Pascal Garnier?

July 28th, 2015

Image via the Guardian Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading? is a feature where the columnist spotlights a writer who has a dedicated following and is well known within the writing community, but hasn't achieved the elephant-in-the-room style success of a Stephen King or Gillian Flynn—But they deserve to, dammit! Hopefully the column will help gain the author featured a few more well deserved readers. The French know noir.

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Six of the Best Alternate Universes in Comics

July 28th, 2015

Comic books have long been on the bleeding edge of science, no doubt because they can make things up without the need for all those pesky facts and evidence. One of the most popular concepts, which is being adopted by more mainstream fictions with increasing frequency, is the idea that our universe is merely one destination in a vast multiverse of endless possibilities.

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