stillness is a lie, my dear
We’re all subject to criticism, and the larger our profiles, the louder, more distributed, and more intense the criticism tends to be. Authors certainly endure their share of bad reviews, and have a variety of ways of dealing with them, from refusing to read discussions of their work to thoughtfully reading and digesting critique. Some, […]
Fanworks in general continue to be one of the most despised and sneered at forms of creative expression, despite their huge diversity and depth of creativity. Some mainstream creators hate them and hotly insist that fanart, fanfic, poetry, and other fanworks are ‘ripoffs’ of their work, in some cases pursuing fannish creators in an attempt […]
Kids these days, getting all over English’s lawn, just like…generations of teens before them. English is a constantly and fascinatingly evolving language, but somehow older generations seem continually surprised by this, even though they themselves participated in pushing English in new directions in their younger years. As a consequence, we get to hear a great […]
Do you ever feel not just like bad things come in threes, but that references come in clumps? For the last few weeks, I feel like I’ve been inundated in references to older adults having sex, usually in the framework of a conversation suggesting that it’s gross or funny that old people have sex. As […]
Every other week, it seems, I’m reading an article attacking young adult literature. It’s trashy, it’s too dark, it’s not dark enough, it’s juvenile, it’s too sexy, it focuses too much on girls…the list seems endless, as Aja Romano pointed out at the Daily Dot earlier this year. In response to every ludicrous opinion piece […]
Why is it that people seem genuinely surprised when teens provide evidence of the fact that they have personalities, and causes, and taste, and things they believe in? People goggle as though they’ve just seen a black swan pontificating about free market capitalism every time a teen opens her mouth to contribute to conversations instead […]
I am far from the first, or the last, person to talk about this, but, seriously, can we knock it off with the ‘hahaha grandmas using computers?’ jokes? Like, seriously? See also ‘hahaha moms using computers,’ which goes right in the same category. Because I’m really tired of seeing adult women framed as hapless victims […]
I love YA. As we all know. I read a ton of it, I love interacting with YA authors, I love YA readers. I think it’s a fantastic genre with tons of potential and my favourite books right now are all YA. I’m not alone; crossover fiction appealing to adults as well as teens and […]
The sharp rise in youth unemployment that has accompanied the financial crisis has been a topic of much discussion and debate. Younger workers, or young people who want to be working, have a lot to lose right now, and increasingly have less to gain. Many are struggling not just with unemployment, but high student loan […]