The cover of Dictee by Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha

A “Genre-Bending” Poetic Journey through Modern Korean History

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée is an experiment in both lyric and epic modernism that uses form to invoke the tragedy of the wartime partition of Korea.
Katherine Mansfield, c. 1914

Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov

Living in exile in Germany, the young New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield found solace in studying—and copying—Chekhov’s short stories.
Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin and His Correspondents: A Lifetime of Letters

An epistolary network was critical for Darwin’s work, allowing him to obtain new information while sparking fresh ideas in his correspondents’ minds.
The covers of Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans and How do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology

Searching for Home in Hmong American Writing

Two significant poetry anthologies deterritorialize home, showing that for Hmong Americans, home can be a process of moving and running despite living in a place.
Punctuation Personified: or, Pointing Made Easy (London: John Harris, 1824).

What Is Punctuation For?

Between the medieval and modern world, the marks used to make writing more legible changed from “pointing” to punctuation.
A cartoon illustration of an elderly woman communicating on the internet

I Hope This Finds You Well, or, Dude, You Good?

Are formulaic hoping and wishing statements in correspondence evidence of magical thinking?
Two boys studying in a dormitory room at Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, PA, 1901

Subversive Student Writing at Carlisle Indian School

In the early twentieth century, some Anishinaabe students turned writing assignments meant to showcase assimilation into celebrations of resistance.
A woman at a desk with digital windows flowing behind her

Digital Overload

How can contemporary biographers contend with the explosion of materials at their disposal?
A Cheshire cat stuffed toy, from the permanent collection of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

A Brief History of Literary Cats

There’s nothing like curling up with a good book and a soft cat. Even better is a book with a cat in it.
Illustration by Arthur Rackham

Sick Party!

The party as site of contagion in Edgar Allan Poe, Evelyn Waugh, and Ling Ma.