Author: emilyhargitai
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Writing People We Know
By Elana Marcus In the 2015 Noah Baumbach film, Mistress America, college freshman Tracy meets her stepsister, Brooke, for the first time. Inspired by Brooke’s eccentric personality, Tracy writes a short story about her to submit to the school literary journal. After Brooke discovers the story, she is enraged. A whole interrogation scene follows where…
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The Sliding Razor: Effects of Sensory Imagery in Writing
By Shannon Magrane Sensory imagery, by definition, is an element of writing in which the five senses (sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell) are described in order to make your readers feel what your characters are experiencing. By evoking a sensory reaction, the writer enables the reader to be part of the characters’ physical experience.…
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A Celebration and a Weight to Bear: Exploring Violence, Loss, and Culture in Tarfia Faizullah’s Registers of Illuminated Villages
By Mitchell Angelo Tarfia Faizullah is a Bengali-American award-winning poet. Her second collection of poetry, Registers of Illuminated Villages, examines violence: both personal and societal. She utilizes the confessional style to present the reader with real life challenges she has faced. Faizullah blends the philosophical with the tangible. Her work makes the reader ask questions…
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Dynamic Characters in Theatre and Writing
As a Theatre and Performance Major, I’m often asked to consider my character’s wants when playing a role. “What is my motivation?” is a question that actors pose so often that it’s parodied. But as it turns out, there’s something to this question. Actors use it to better inhabit their characters. If I can take…
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Every Game is a Workshop: Becoming a Better Writer By Playing Dungeons and Dragons
By Mina Guadalupe Whether they are making maps or building combats, millions of people around the world have used Dungeons and Dragons as a creative outlet. With time, the fantasy role-playing game only seems to be getting more popular. As a D&D fan myself, I find that the skills I develop—both as a player and…
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A Cozier Alternative to the Classroom (An Interview with Paloma Gratereaux)
An Interview by Carly Sorenson Paloma Gratereaux is a junior double-major at SUNY Purchase and recent founder of the African American Women Writers Book Club. The club meets biweekly on Mondays at 6:30 p.m. in the Multicultural Center. Shortly after the club’s first meeting, the two of us sat down for a conversation about representation,…
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Surviving the Day: How Stephen King Helped Me Grow Up
By Nick Sapienza I was always a shy kid. Whether it was talking to people or sending a text message, my social anxiety made me fear even the shortest interactions. During my grade school years, I felt immense pressure to be social and make friends, which left me feeling increasingly paranoid. In times of anxiety,…
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We’re Better Together: On Finding a Writing Community
By Christina Baulch As a Literature major, I’m surrounded by creative writing all the time. Whether I’m studying Medieval English Literature or Sci-Fi, I’ve dedicated my four years at Purchase to analyzing and appreciating creative writing of all mediums, genres, and time periods. Yet, with all this reading in my course schedule, I’ve found it…
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Defying Genre (and Gender): How Camp is More Serious Than It Looks
By Muse McCormack I’m currently in an amazing class called LGBTQ Theater and Performance History where we’ve been reading plays about feminism, queerness, and genderfluidity. Many of these plays use camp or exaggeration, especially of gender, to comment on gender and feminism in America. Camp is a kind of performance or aesthetic that is usually…
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A Magazine Given a Second Chance
By Trisha Murphy If you travel to the back of Campus Center South, you will find a flight of stairs to your left. Take them to the basement, hang a right and walk till you’re just shy of the exit to the dumpster and room 0024/0025 will be on the left, the place I love…
