Jordy Rosenberg

Queering Jack Sheppard

An interview with author Jordy Rosenberg about his mesmerizing novel, Confessions of the Fox.
Maxim Gorky

Revolutionary Writer Maxim Gorky’s NYC Sex Scandal

In 1906, Russian Bolshevik writer Maxim Gorky was given a warm welcome in the United States. Then the American media manufactured a scandal about his girlfriend.
Hammock reader summer

Summer Reading in JSTOR

Stories by Meg Wolitzer, David Sedaris, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, E. Annie Proulx, Amy Tan, Donna Tartt, Lydia Millet, Lauren Groff, and more.
Whaling painting

Did North America’s Longest Painting Inspire Moby-Dick?

Herman Melville likely saw the panorama “Whaling Voyage,” which records the sinking of the whaler Essex, while staying in Boston in 1849.
WB Yeats

W.B. Yeats Loved Tarot Cards

The august Irish poet was once a member of a secret occult order called The Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn. He was also an avid student of the Tarot.
Florida car

Wild and Finally Free in Lauren Groff’s Florida

Lauren Groff’s latest story collection explores the literary archetype of the Orphan.
Elizabeth Bennett

How Lizzie Bennet Got Her Books

In Regency England, a novel cost about $100. Subscription-based circulating libraries became a way for women of modest means to gain knowledge.
Adults reading comics

Why Adults Love Comic Books

There's more to comic books than bright colors, gratiutious violence, and whimsy. Comics tells stories that are deeply significant to their readers.
paragraph book

What a Paragraph Is

On the controversial directive that a paragraph must contain a topic sentence, an idea that theorists, writers, and students have questioned for decades.
King Arthur Harry Potter

Harry Potter, the Arthurian Romance

Perhaps the Harry Potter stories are so potent because they rework the iconic hero stories of medieval French Arthurian romances.