Pussy and Paperbacks

Lucy Ellmann’s one-thousand-page novel Ducks, Newburyport is a long swim inside a woman’s mind, unbroken by any full stops. Thoughts are separated by the phrase ‘the fact that,’ and associations roam freely across the page. There is a normally structured sub-story of a mountain lioness with paragraphs and periods. These womanly, motherly points of view…

A cultural critic must absorb all of the particles of light that the internet and art bestows upon them. From writing articles for the New York Times on perfume to resplendent features on prominent figures in TV like Natasha Lyonne, musicians like Barbara Streisand, and literature in The New Yorker, Rachel Syme brings a vivid…

Perhaps it is a choice to act like an unmade bed; hair unkempt in a way that is tasteful to myself, eating with my hands, calm by my lonesome and loud in a group. Keeping a feral glow on my face, staying pure to my honesty. And too much so. My idiosyncrasies are often labeled…

Mona Awad’s Ivy League horror novel, Bunny (2019). 03 02 22; 3 days pre-salon “I want this to be akin to Bennington College 1980s Donna-Tartt-hosted party,” I tell my friends over text. My order of culinary lavender arrived a few days ago, and the scent lingers prettily in my nose whenever I take in its…

As a writer, flow states are miraculous holidays, torrents of creativity where words leave the mind all at once, fluidly and naturally. They manifest in a pure, immersive focus where the mind is engaged and creating as if on autopilot. It is absorption in the work, all senses sparkling. It can be a type of…