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Chainmail Bikinis and Other Sexism in Science Fiction and Literature

Chainmail Bikinis and Other Sexism in Science Fiction and Literature

If you’ve seen older issues of popular science fiction magazines—think from the 1930s to the 1960s—you’ve seen cover art of half-naked women being abducted by aliens or saved by a ‘handsome’ white dude in a spacesuit. (If you’re lucky, maybe you’ve even seen a cover with both at the same time!) Done up in garish…

How Can We Feed Our Creativity?

How Can We Feed Our Creativity?

For songwriter Vienna Teng, the secret seems to lie in her variety of influences. While I combed through your fabulous feedback (!) on What Poetry Can Learn from Pop Music last month, I connected with Teng for my ongoing interview series,  “Hey Guys, Other People Read Too!“  A Taiwanese-American songwriter, Vienna’s chamber-folk style has led her to Letterman, the CBS Saturday Early Show,…

The Myth of the Literary Cowboy, Part 6: Save a Horse, Write a (Space) Cowboy

The Myth of the Literary Cowboy, Part 6: Save a Horse, Write a (Space) Cowboy

Over the past few months, the Myth of the Literary Cowboy has explored how and why Willie was spot on when he observed that our “heroes have always been cowboys.” White hats, singers, anti-hero gunslingers, poets, pop music subjects—the role of the cowboy is part of the collective American pop culture conscience. What is left for the…

The Other Typist

The Other Typist

The Other Typist Suzanne Rindell Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, May 2013 368 pages $25.95 The Other Typist, a crime mystery nestled inside a lovely period piece, is the story of Rose Baker, a stenographer at a Manhattan police station in the early 1920s. Rose is particularly well-suited to her job: an unflappable, meticulous person, she was…