Category: Blog Post

By Kukuwa Ashun and Edyn Getz

Purchase College welcomed MacArthur Fellowship Award winner Lydia Davis to campus on Thursday, September 24th. Before hosting a public reading and campus wide Q&A, Professor Okasi’s Editing & Production class had the opportunity to sit down and interview the author. She answered questions about the intimate literary world, her writing process, and the roles that sounds play in her own work. In the excerpt below, Lydia explores the relationship between sound, fiction, and the editing process.

Continue reading “I Don’t Read Aloud: An Excerpted Interview with Lydia Davis” →

By Maggie McEvoy

Young women are a driving force of the market, especially when it concerns Young Adult (YA) literature. When I think of YA literature, images of screaming fan-girls, Katniss Everdeen with her bow pulled taut, and Barnes & Nobel shelves filled with bright pink binding come to mind. When girls—especially teenage girls—love something, they love hard. Young women are a powerful deciding factor on whether or not something is going to be a hit. One would think that with that power, people would be dying to have girls enjoy their books, that we as a society would strive to give girls access to quality content. Continue reading “Female Representation in YA Literature” →

By Danielle McCormack

Photography has been a continuous influence in my life. At a young age I would follow my mother around as she would take photographs of family occasions and weddings. Nowadays, everyone with an Instagram account and a smartphone considers themselves a photographer, but when I was twelve and first exploring the art of photography with my instant print Polaroid, I began looking at the world with a photographer’s eye. My mission was to go out to capture the world. Continue reading “The Power of Image in Photography and Poetry” →

By Kevin Domanski

The link between writing and drinking is a tradition that has spanned centuries. Most writers are well aware of the tales of Hemingway drinking his way from Havana to Paris, Carver and Cheever spending more time at The Mill Bar than teaching at Iowa, Bukowski stumbling into and through readings; I could go on, but I think you get my point. Continue reading “Chasing the Muse (Without a Chaser?)” →

By James Siegel

When asked about the biggest influences on my poetry, a few names spring to mind: Hart Crane, Berrymen, Dickinson, Stevens. But that response feels academic, the expected answer rather than the true one. That’s not to say that they did not actually influence my work, because they certainly did. It’s just that they are newer names to me, while the roots of my poetry knowledge comes from quite a different list of names: Kanye, Jadakiss, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane. Continue reading “The Intersection of Rap and Poetry” →

By Ajani Bazile-Dutes

Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, the author of the extremely popular novels, “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” hosted the National Book Awards last year on November 19^th 2014. At the awards ceremony, he announced that Jacqueline Woodson had won in the category for young adult literature for her book, Brown Girl Dreaming, a biographical collection of poems about being a black youth growing up in the sixties and seventies in South Carolina and New York. In Handler’s remarks, he made the following statement: “I told Jackie she was going to win, and I said that if she won, I would tell all of you something I learned about her this summer, which is that Jackie Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink in your mind.” Continue reading “Young Adult Literature’s Race Problem” →

By Christopher Stewart

Children all across America thrive in the summer time. It is a three-month break from classes, teachers, cafeterias, but not reading. Year after year American students save their assigned reading till the very last minute and proceed to exchange essays and SparkNote links before the first day of school, resulting in a large pile of essays featuring unoriginal content, and a classroom full of clueless students. Needless to say when I graduated high school I relished in the idea of spending summers reading on my own time. Finishing books at my own pace, leaving the nuance of rushed reading behind me. Continue reading “Summer Reading: Slowly & Scarcely” →

By Carly Fowler

Everyone has to start somewhere, yet there is a certain disdain for young creators. We turn our noses up at the first attempts made by anyone still in their twenties or younger. Reviews often read, “Amateurish,” or “Juvenile,” without ever explaining what makes the content deserving of such harsh criticism other than that the artist is of a young age. Of course, by taking this stance we are forgetting the young artists that have solidified the literary canon, such as S.E Hinton who wrote The Outsiders when she was just eighteen, and Mary Shelley who crafted Frankenstein when she was nineteen. We are likely to let potential classics go unnoticed if we continue to disregard work created by a younger generation. Continue reading “In Defense of Young Artists” →

By Whisper Blanchard

“If I ever strangled sparrows/it was only because I dreamed/of better songs.”

Consider this line as an introduction into the work of Saeed Jones, a young poet who has recently published his debut collection, Prelude to Bruise, which was picked up by Coffee House Press and put on shelves in September of 2014. I’ve chosen this quote to show you what you will undoubtedly encounter upon reading: underlying desperation and frustration that spawns from the issues often present in these poems, such as an ambiguity with race, sexual orientation, and the exploration of the individual through such mediums. Brace yourself for the confusing comfort of vivid imagery offset by violence (or heightened by violence), a technique that defines Jones’ unique voice as a poet. Continue reading “Prelude to Bruise” →

By Riley Dixon

In attempting quite fervently to ‘idle,’ I learned that I am almost incapable of remaining in a completely idle state. There is a buzzing inside and out that I cannot seem to shake unless I am totally at peace. I seem to have falsely convinced myself that a moment at rest is a moment wasted. There is not a single part of me that enjoys a passive existence—and so I write. Continue reading “On Writing, On Observing, On Anxiety” →