Fiction writer Samantha Hunt has the capacity to tell a story that genuinely surprises, like her 2016 novel Mr. Splitfoot, which I read in a hot hurry, then immediately restarted because I wasn’t ready to be done with its mix of strangeness and surprise. That book flirted with something dark and occult, so I was […]
Katie Pelletier
Posted inArts
Into The Dark Dark
The Extraordinary and the Familiar Intertwine in Samantha Hunt’s Debut Story Collection
The extraordinary and the familiar intertwine in Samantha Hunt’s debut story collection.
Posted inTheater & Performance
Spiritrials Reveals the Reach of the War on Drugs
Photo courtesy of BoomArts Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the War on Drugs. If you’ve forgotten about the racist legacy of these “get tough” laws, I recommend you see Spiritrials, a play created and performed by Dahlak Brathwaite, running now through April 30 at Disjecta. Not long before the United States elected its first […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Spiritrials Reveals the Reach of the War on Drugs
Dahlak Brathwaite Explores Racism in a Time of Mass Incarceration
Spiritrials explores racism in a time of mass incarceration.
Posted inBooks
A Korean Adoptee Tries to Make (and Do) Good in Patty Cottrell’s Fearless, Tragicomic Debut
At the time of her brother’s death, Helen Moran, the heroine of Patty Yumi Cottrell’s darkly funny debut novel, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, is “a 32-year-old woman, single, irregularly menstruating, college-educated and partially employed.” Living meagerly in a cramped apartment in New York City, she is devoted to her part-time job caring for troubled […]
Posted inArts
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace’s Hero Dysphoria
A Korean Adoptee Tries to Make (and Do) Good in Patty Cottrell’s Fearless, Tragicomic debut
A Korean adoptee tries to make (and do) good in Patty Cottrell’s fearless, tragicomic debut.
Posted inBooks
Randa Jarrar’s Geography of Taboo
Surprising, Beautiful Stories in Him, Me, Muhammad Ali
Surprising, beautiful stories in Him, Me, Muhammad Ali.
Posted inTheater & Performance
Challenging Gender Norms in Defunkt Theatre’s Hir
ROSEMARY RAGUSA A veteran returns from war having seen unspeakable things and harboring deep psychological wounds. He has trouble finding his place in society again. A familiar plot? Yes, but at Defunkt Theatre, Taylor Mac’s hero-comes-home family drama Hir is a droll and intelligent subversion of the genre, a romp through queer theory and problematic […]
Posted inArts
Hir: Love, War, and Vomit
Challenging Gender Norms in Defunkt Theatre’s Gut-Wrenching Family Drama
Challenging gender norms in Defunkt Theatre’s gut-wrenching family drama.
Posted inBooks
Susan Faludi Applies a Journalistic Lens to Her Father’s Gender Transition
AUTHOR PHOTO BY SIGRID ESTRADA Pulitzer Prize-winning feminist writer Susan Faludi had been estranged from her difficult and domineering father for a quarter of a century when he reached out to her. Via email, he announced that he’d undergone gender confirmation surgery in Thailand and was now a woman named Stefánie living in his (now […]
Posted inBooks
Gazing into The Dark Room
Susan Faludi Applies a Journalistic Lens to Her Father’s Gender Transition
Susan Faludi Applies a Journalistic Lens to Her Father’s Gender Transition
Posted inTBA
TBA Review: Britt Hatzius’s Blind Cinema is Not For Child-Hating Roald Dahl Villains
Hearing an eight-year-old describe a film is hilarious. Britt Hatzius The setup for Britt Hatzius’s Blind Cinema, which ran throughout PICA’s TBA:16, seems to me the sort of thing that would either strongly appeal or appall. The event entails experiencing a film blindfolded while a child sitting behind you describes what’s happening on the screen, […]