Author: Kristen
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Digging into Metaphors
I’ve been reading The New Life by Tom Crewe, a novel about gender and sexuality and the cultural expectations of domestic life in 1890s London—to put it in a very small and inadequate nutshell. It’s a very good book, one I would very much recommend (content warning: sex scenes). However, this is not a review…
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Introducing Leo Bloom, Courtesy of His Cat
Leopold Bloom is the protagonist of Ulysses, yet he doesn’t show up until page 55. And even then, he’s not the first to speak in his own chapter. James Joyce gave that honor to Bloom’s unnamed cat. Scholars have long noted that Joyce was a cat lover and that he may even have preferred their…
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Ice, Isolation, and Solitude
I. On Friday, the snow started falling and falling, but it was soft and dry, unusual for the Portland area. The ice came quickly after in some areas, which is not so unusual. The snow in my back yard remained about a foot deep. The city is famously ill-equipped for dealing with snow, but no…
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A Gawain for All Seasons
SAYING IT IN LARGE TEXT: I 100% REVEAL THE ENDING OF THIS MOVIE IN THIS ESSAY. If you’ve seen it or that doesn’t bother you (it is a good movie worth watching), read on. Here’s the thing about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: every version depicts an imagined past. The original, written in the…
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Sci-Fi Facing Backward
For decades, genre fiction of all kinds—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, and historical fiction—was relegated to the pulp racks and considered beneath the notice of serious readers. Many of these books, while fun, were not masterpieces, and the few that could have been considered masterpieces—maybe a Ray Bradbury novella or an Ursula le Guin series—were disdained…
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Bête of Burden
During the first summer of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, I decided to tackle my first translation of a book from French to English. Voyage Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre seemed like an obvious choice that summer, since it’s a novel about the author’s house arrest in the late eighteenth century. He spent…
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Must Of Been a Mistake
I received an email from my website form about people using “of” where they should use “have” in their writing. It was really more of a comment than a question. I wasn’t going to address it because I didn’t know where I’d talk about it, but then I started this newsletter, and here we are.The…
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Donna Tartt, Queen of Punctuation
My friend Carly, who knows how my brain works and can wind my literary obsessions up like a toy, told me over dinner one night that she had decided that Donna Tartt was the queen of punctuation. She was reading The Secret History for the first time, though it was Carly herself who had insisted…
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My Go-To Freelance Tools and Apps
I’ve noticed, after six months of stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, that a lot of people are striking out on their own to build freelance businesses. I’ve been out here living a freelance life since 2006, and I would like to welcome you all! It can be tough going for the first few years,…
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A Translation for the Quarantimes
I’m working on a translation of Une Voyage autour ma Chambre (A Voyage Around My Room), by Xavier de Maistre, from French to English. He was confined to his room for 42 days in the 1790s as a punishment for dueling, so this is a perfect project for these quarantimes. It includes his thoughts on the soul, his…
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How to Make a Book Step 6: Do the Details
Your book is now a little like Pinocchio, who waited to become a real boy. You’ve got edited text, a nicely designed interior, and an eye-catching cover. Now it’s time for your project to become a real book. And that means doing all the little details that make it happen.
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Freelance Perks: Serious Time Off
Here is what it is like to be a mid-career freelance editor and writer. After building up subject expertise and reliable contacts and great clients, I get to take a month off. Like, a whole month. This month, to be exact. How I Planned It In the spring, Mr. KHG and I discussed taking time…