Lament of the Secular Scholar
With a week to go before my first doctoral exam, I still find myself struggling to describe how I feel about this entire process. Before proceeding I should acknowledge that PhD programs are not easy,...
View ArticleOn the Home Stretch of the First Doctoral Exam
There are just two days to go in my first doctoral exam, a week in which I’ve been writing three papers demonstrating breadth and depth of knowledge in the Victorian era from the ~100 reading units...
View ArticleBrave Old Worlds — A European Short-Fiction Sampler
Best European Fiction 2014 Drago Jančar / Aleksandar Hemon Dalkey Archive Press I have a weakness for this series, which every year reminds me what range of storytelling strategies still exists,...
View ArticleLiving with Sorrow: A Reading List
Early each morning, when I find myself conversing with people no longer in my life, the moocher in my apartment assumes I’m talking to her. No matter what tone my little grief chats take, she just bats...
View ArticleEnough Already: The Anti-Atheist Article Shows Its Age
Michael Robbins, writing for Slate Magazine, recently contributed to that most robust literary genre, the anti-atheist op-ed, with a review of Nick Spencer’s Atheists: The Origin of the Species....
View ArticleConversation Enders: The Problem with Hero-Worship
Working part-time at a local bookstore is a great reprieve from the isolation of my studies. Just as I get to know many customers’ personal lives, so too have many of them learned that I’m a doctoral...
View ArticleTen Books Read and Loved in 2015
Year-end lists arrive too late for the biggest spree in our consumerist culture, so although I support public libraries alongside local bookstores, I’m jotting down this year’s reading preferences now,...
View ArticleReviewing the Rest of Analog April 2016
I love reading the work with which I’m lucky enough to share an issue, so I’d like to chat a bit about the other content in Analog‘s April 2016 issue. There haven’t been many formal reviews of this...
View ArticleTwo Paths to Short-Story Publication
This is an amusing post for me, because I haven’t submitted much writing this year (The Year In Which I Will Finish My PhD), and in consequence, I only have one poetry acceptance under my belt for...
View ArticleHow We Go Forward, and When, and Why
The following is a reflective essay that begins by invoking a terrible event of sweeping reach: geographically, temporally, and culturally. I move to other matters, both abstract and personal, soon...
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