Conversations | The Smart Set

When the Satanists Moved In

Erica Zelinger — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:30:00 +0000

Writer Paul Crenshaw found himself trying to make sense of the fear that engulfed everything in his 1980s childhood in small-town Arkansas and the world around him. The Cold War. Stranger Danger. Satanic Panic. In his most recent book of essays Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other ’80s Perils, published by The Ohio […]

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Elena Ferrante and Feminine Creativity

Brianna Di Monda and Stiliana Milkova — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 21:03:02 +0000

While there have been numerous essays, interviews, and op-eds published about Elena Ferrante, Stiliana Milkova’s Elena Ferrante as World Literature is the first English-language monograph on the author. With her new book, Milkova situates the pseudonymous Italian writer at the intersection of Greek mythology; Freudian psychoanalysis; and French, Italian, and Anglophone feminist thought, showing how […]

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Nourishing Young Writers in Philadelphia

Kiara Santos — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 11:30:00 +0000

Mighty Writers is a non-profit organization. With the mission of “Think clearly and write with clarity,” their food and literacy programs respectively have served over 3,500 kids in low-income inner-Philadelphia neighborhoods. The organization emphasizes how conscious effort towards low-income children is necessary to nourish them in multitudes — to nourish them in ways that aren’t […]

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Haunted Memories, Sifted Dreams

Melinda Lewis — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 11:30:00 +0000

Gina Nutt’s Night Rooms is a book of passages. I mean this literally in its form, a collection of nonfiction narrative poems that construct the book, and also metaphorically as each paragraph moves us from one sensation to another, unlocking a series of memories and feelings. Covering Nutt’s childhood, early adolescence, and adulthood, the collection as […]

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How the Ebola Epidemic in Africa Prefigured COVID-19

Arvind Dilawar — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 11:30:00 +0000

In the novel, In the Company of Men, a virus speaks. It is laying waste to society, putting its victims into mass graves, leaving survivors in limbo, and confining the rest to quarantine. Yet the virus defends its actions, insisting that it is no worse — perhaps even it is even better — than human beings in […]

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The Women of the Gulag

Arvind Dilawar — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:00:10 +0000

In 1951, Susanna Pechuro was a 17-year-old student, living at home with her family in Moscow. Three years earlier, she had met Boris Slutsky, who was only slightly older than Pechuro but already living on his own in a communal apartment. Pechuro regarded Slutsky as an “orthodox and militant Marxist,” but it’s easy to tell that she was also in […]

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To Mars and Beyond

Arvind Dilawar — Mon, 11 May 2020 11:30:16 +0000

As we bemoan the standing shelter-at-place orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consider: What if you were constrained to your home for months? For years? And without the delivery of food, clothing, or other necessities? What would you need to stockpile to survive and how would you fit it all into the limited space available? […]

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Before It’s Too Late

Arvind Dilawar — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 11:30:15 +0000

On September 23, 1938, the government of Czechoslovakia — the modern-day Czech Republic and Slovakia — announced the general mobilization of its armed forces. Within five days, more than a million troops were armed and fighter planes, bombers, and tanks dispersed throughout the country. In the regions bordering Germany and Austria, the streets were barricaded, […]

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On Automatic

Arvind Dilawar — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 12:30:44 +0000

Joe Toscano’s book Automating Humanity is illustrated with visions of two worlds: one a cold, corporate wasteland, where the ubiquitous iconography of companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple looms large over their slavish users; and the other a warm wonderland, where technology and nature have come together in miraculous ways, allowing for off-planet farming and living architecture. […]

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Guessing Ghosts

Arvind Dilawar — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 12:30:36 +0000

Shortly after midnight on Saturday, March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and all 239 people aboard vanished. To this day, MH370 remains lost, with the latest investigation finding no trace of the aircraft within a 44,000-square-mile stretch of the Indian Ocean. Despite the ubiquity of GPS tracking systems embedded in every smartphone, the constant contact […]

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