Food and Literature Pairings

The culinary world is full of pairing guidelines: food and wine pairing, flavor matching, even complex rules for how to put together an entire dinner menu. For all this abundance of guidelines, though, there’s still one hole left in the food canon, and that’s literature and food pairing. If you’ve ever wondered what snacks to Read More …

Exploring the Literary World Through Four Student Perspectives

“What’s weird to me is that a lot of genres are taken off reading lists as an option, because it’s one thing to say, ‘oh, writing this, you’d probably fail. Writing science fiction short fiction is hard.’ Okay, fair. But am I going to do bad reading it?” No matter their major, every student has Read More …

Fun Home: Alison Bechdel’s Decidedly Not Pretentious Study of Fatherhood

One evening last semester, I lounged on my couch with my roommate, drinking hot chocolate while we trash-talked pretension in academia. We complained about articles filled with long-winded jargon seemingly meant only to confuse the reader. We griped about the class readings we didn’t care about but were required to write papers on. We moaned Read More …

A New Approach to Unraveling Abuse in Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

Interweaving narrative, metaphor, and reflection with overarching questions and social theory, Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir, In the Dream House, is an account of Machado’s harrowing experience in an abusive relationship. More than that, In the Dream House examines the unique circumstances that arise from abusive queer relationships compared to abusive heteronormative ones. She tackles the Read More …

Fantasy and Science Fiction Matter

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class in college, you’ve probably heard the same thing I’ve grown to expect on the first day of any given writing class that’s creative in any respect: No Fantasy or Science Fiction Work. The professor might give some long-winded speech about why fantasy and science fiction are too Read More …

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere

As a college student who has long since deviated from finishing books in one sitting or even just reading for the fun of it (sound familiar?), it takes a lot to keep me invested. I can’t count how many books I’ve started and promptly forgotten due to a weak plot, lackluster characters, or whatever it Read More …

Buzz Alexander: A Legacy Through Social Movement

Buzz Alexander was a professor of English at the University of Michigan, the founder of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) through the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and, as a foundation to it all, a firm believer in the power of social justice. From teaching classes on human cruelty (the Holocaust, the Read More …

Lisa Makman

Lisa Makman is a lecturer and the Internship Director in the English department at the University of Michigan. Makman welcomes discussions with and among students both in her classes and in personal meetings, which allows for thriving conversations to blossom from any interaction with her. I sat down with her to discuss how she got Read More …

Interview with Lillian Li: Living and Writing in Ann Arbor

From writing an award-winning novel to working at Literati Bookstore to contemplating the future of her writing career, Lillian Li is the epitome of the Ann Arbor-based writer. As an alumna of University of Michigan’s esteemed Helen Zell Writers’ Program, Lillian has had many unique opportunities. As I learned in a recent interview with Lillian, Read More …