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How to Feed Your Characters: The Food Timeline

How to Feed Your Characters: The Food Timeline

Writing about some hungry characters? In a time or place very different from your own? The Food Timeline might just save your bacon. Founded by New Jersey-based reference librarian, Lynne Olver, FT is a free, open-access website and research service devoted to the history of all things culinary. I interviewed Ms. Olver to find out…

“Dear Lucky One”: The Westing Game Invites Us to Play

“Dear Lucky One”: The Westing Game Invites Us to Play

Thirty-five years after the publication of Ellen Raskin’s novel The Westing Game, readers still rave about it. As one literary agent tweeted recently, “if I could find the new Ellen Raskin, I would be the happiest agent ever.” Bestselling novelist Gillian Flynn ventures that in Gone Girl, she maybe, “finally,” achieved the wordplay of The…

Ploughshares Fantasy Blog Draft Round 2 – Vonnegut to the Chopper! vs What the Chuckin’ Buk?!

Ploughshares Fantasy Blog Draft Round 2 – Vonnegut to the Chopper! vs What the Chuckin’ Buk?!

Voting this past week was a return to the pitched ferocity of the first round, as both Benjamin Samuel’s The Mighty Duck Palahniuks (Electric Literature) and Michael Nye’s The Holden Caulbabies (Missouri Review) brought out voters in force. The two teams deadlocked at the end of the week, and again we were forced to undergo…

A Novel Phobia: Treatment Plan

While I may have given Graphobibliophobia a name, it would seem that it is a widespread affliction. Identifying it was the first step. Now, fellow Graphobibliophobes, what do we do about it? Traditional treatments for phobias include things like modeling, counter-conditioning, and exposure treatments. All of these involve confronting the fear in some controlled way….