The Flood
This time, the flood deposits me at the foot of the Cailleach’s rock in Coulagh Bay. And I didn’t even see it coming.
Student Work: storytelling
Just Write
In all my years of writing, this is what I’ve been told about short stories: They are about one thing, they are less complex than novels, and they are more of a precursor than a respected medium.
Criss Cross Episode Three: George Shulman
A conversation with scholar and political theorist George Shulman about his teaching at Gallatin, the history of the School, and the ways in which speech and political theory are forms of storytelling.
Unrooted: Dangerous Anonymity
On unnamed narrators in the fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri and Edwidge Danticat.
Notes for a Hypothetical Tragedy
The truth of any good tale is the thing that makes it art. Without truth, art’s power to change the way we see things fails in the hands of the artists and remains, then, merely words on a page.
The Screen and Us
Jordan Peele's 2019 film makes a political statement with an unnerving horror, but the audience remains at a safe distance.
The Radical Comedy of Fleabag and Get On Your Knees
In their groundbreaking one-woman plays, Phoebe-Waller Bridge and Jacqueline Novak prove that uncensored comedy celebrating female sexuality can find mainstream success.
WHITE NOISE, BLACK SCREEN
To what extent does a villain become a victim? Can you make a human out of any monster?
WHEN LINEAR TURNS CYCLICAL
They knew the surrounding wilderness like the backs of their hands, or rather, the wilderness and the backs of their hands were continuous, separated by no boundary.
Fictionalizing
"The human mind is hardwired to see patterns and connections where they otherwise would not exist. Faces are one of the images that our mind most automatically construes out of irrelevant and nondescript objects, so much so that two dashes and a curve or a parking meter can easily resemble a smiley face."
Suzanne
"I’ve replayed in my mind Suzanne’s death. I wasn’t there, and the details as they’ve been told to me get conflated, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing them over and over again."
The Storytelling Animal
"We are hardwired to see patterns, to create explanations, to find meaning, and we do this through constructing narrative."