Russia’s Last Czar, Nicholas II, Had a Massive Dragon Tattoo
In 1891, several years before he became Czar, Nicholas traveled to Japan. It was a difficult trip for the royal, in which he was the victim of a failed assassination…
Leonora Carrington Rewrote the Surrealist Narrative for Women
In one of Carrington’s earliest stories, “The Debutante,” a young woman who does not want to go to a ball switches places with a hyena. The débutante allows her maid…
At My Urban Farm, I’m Growing My Family and Growing Our Sanctuary
“Identity,” he said, “is formed from three components: first, self-identity; second, social identity; and third, legal identity—the most important of which is self-identity, the only facet of identity that involves…
Ted Chiang Uses Science to Illuminate the Human Condition
I think science and religion could more peacefully coexist if we could agree that they are trying to answer different questions; science is investigating the question, “how does the universe…
George Orwell Reveals the Role & Responsibility of the Writer “In an Age of State Control”
Well, then what? Do we have to conclude that it is the duty of every writer to “keep out of politics”? Certainly not! In any case, as I have said…
I’m an Award-Winning Short Story Writer and I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Either
What I’d forgotten: the way I could hold a short story in my head for the entire composition of it, how the first mysterious intimations — a sentence, an image, an exchange…
Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women
“Prison is an oasis for me—a place for relaxation and comfort. I don’t have freedom here, but I have nothing to worry about, either. There are many people to talk…
A Meditation on Forests, Life, and Art: Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Fir Tree”
“The Fir Tree” was originally published in New Fairy Tales, Second Collection (1844) next to another winter tale, The Snow Queen. It was swiftly overshadowed by that other story and…
For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain
We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the…
Why Are Men So bad at writing sex?
Male authors dominate the Bad Sex in Fiction awards, and it’s no coincidence