Summer 2020
Salmon Eaters to Sagebrushers: Washington’s Lost Literary Legacy
Review of Salmon Eaters to Sagebrushers: Washington’s Lost Literary Legacy » More ...
Literature
Summer 2020
Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition
Buddy Levy
St. Martin’s Press: 2019
Lt. Adolphus W. Greely, commander of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, assessed the situation from the edge of the ice floe upon which he and his men were stranded.
It was dire.
They were adrift on a raft of ice, and it was 11 degrees Fahrenheit—cold for the time of year but not as low as the sub-zero temperatures they regularly experienced during their two years of exploration and data collection, … » More …
Spring 2020
Mao’s Kisses: A novel of June 4, 1989
Alex Kuo
Redbat Books, 2019
Deng Xiaoping learned to play bridge in the early 1950s. Little did he realize that appropriating state transportation to take him and his team to tournaments would result in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and his being transported far from Beijing for reeducation through manual labor.
But Deng wasn’t just a Goren Prize-winning bridge player. He was, after his rehabilitation, China’s paramount leader during a time of civil crisis. The spring of 1989 brought … » More …
Winter 2019
Stripland
Review of Stripland, a novel by former Washington State University professor of English Joan Burbick. » More ...
Spring 2019
Arts and science
Storytellers, not machines, should decide how to act on data, according to the Matthew Jockers, the new dean of Washington State University's College of Arts and Sciences and the author of "The Bestseller Code." Jockers combines his English literature background with computer programming for literary analysis. » More ...
Summer 2018
Briefly noted
A Day in the Life of a Country Vet
Fred Newschwander ’74 DVM
2018
Mostly true stories, anecdotes, and illustrations about the animals and people from the life and career of a retired mixed animal veterinarian.
Notes in the Category of C: Reflections on Laboratory Animal Care and Use
Steven Niemi ’82 DVM
Academic Press: 2017
Niemi’s professional analysis and experience informs ways to improve laboratory animal care and use. His book characterizes the current state of the industry and speculates on its long-term future. Niemi, director of the Office of Animal Resources at Harvard University, has spent a lot of time in … » More …
Winter 2017
Homer on a flash drive
Plato is sitting at the feet of his mentor Socrates, writing down what the old philosopher says. What Socrates is saying, ironically, is that writing is bad for you: It rots your memory. Preserved in Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates’s opinion of the then-emerging technology sounds strange to us now—until you recall that that’s pretty much exactly what pundits in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been saying about TV, video games, and texting.
Dene Grigar, director of Washington State University Vancouver’s program in Creative Media and Digital Culture, laughs and nods. She’s also the president of the Electronic Literature Organization, an international team of scholars and … » More …
Winter 2017
Lit Bits: Electronic literature on the web
“Redshift & Portalmetal” by Micha Cárdenas. Your planet is dying. You have an apparent choice: travel to the Ice Planet and start over, or stay and try to help. Every layer of this piece is rich with video, audio, and a textual narrative that triangulates between science fiction, philosophy, and a sort of future-tending Romanticism.
High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese, an Interactive Poem was created and conceived by the High Muck a Muck Collective. You enter this gorgeously illustrated and written story by clicking on a lottery card–an appropriate visual metaphor for taking your chances on a narrative that determines itself as … » More …
Fall 2017
Bitter Tastes: Literary Naturalism and Early Cinema in American Women’s Writing
Donna M. Campbell
University of Georgia Press: 2016
In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her novel, The Age of Innocence. Wharton was part of a new generation born in the 1860s and 1870s who, equipped with new biological theories, challenged conventions of the Victorian era.
Deriving its title from one of Wharton’s remarks … » More …
Fall 2017
James Thayer on the craft of the novel
James Thayer reads from The Boxer and the Poet
James Thayer ‘71 reads the first chapter of his romantic comedy, The Boxer and the Poet.
Tips and Techniques
Thayer started teaching the craft of the novel about ten years ago as a creative writing instructor at the University of Washington. He’s also a regular contributor to Author magazine.
Thayer, a natural storyteller, absorbed his craft through his lifelong voracious reading habit. When he first got the teaching job, he realized he didn’t have enough to say to fill a 90-hour, year-long course. So, as is his wont, he read a bunch of books. … » More …