literature – nld creative co

The Poem That Every Angsty Kid (And Future Parent) Needs to Read

This poem by Philip Larkin helped me deal with my teenage angst, and it still helps me understand my parents a little better.

The Only Three Forms of Hemingway I Can Tolerate.

Bradley Cooper and I have one thing in common: we both threw A Farewell to Arms across the room when we finished it. OK, it was Cooper’s character from Silver Linings Playbook, but still. I’ve tried to like Hemingway. I tried hard enough to finish A Farewell to Arms, even though with every turn of theContinue reading “The Only Three Forms of Hemingway I Can Tolerate.”

C is for Chopin: The Awakening and Why Fiction Matters

One of those embarrassing pictures of my youth held hostage by the Internet featured The Awakening. My senior year of high school, I posted a series of selfies (before selfies were cool, of course) of my reaction to Kate Chopin’s classic to that early social network, Friendster. Mildly pleased at first, then bored, then scandalizedContinue reading “C is for Chopin: The Awakening and Why Fiction Matters”