Visual media, from comics to anime, interactive video games, and movies, are all ways of telling stories. The process of storytelling is similar, in many aspects, from one medium to another. Here the author, with thirty years’... Read More

Hannah is fourteen years old in 1866, living in the Utah territory. The story begins shortly after her mother and sister have died of diphtheria, and Hannah has assumed the home duties and primary care of her four younger siblings.... Read More

The author is one of the most significant jazz pianists still playing. His influences cast a wide net on the world of music. Classically trained, he is noted for his eclecticism. The same can be said of his writing: in addition to... Read More

Any backpacker who’s felt superior to the passengers filing off the tour bus in front of the Eiffel Tower, and every vacationer who has fretfully sought to experience the “real” culture of a foreign country from the comfort of a... Read More

Reading H. L. Mencken’s book reviews feels like a secret indulgence. One relishes in Mencken’s frequent barbs at the famous and would-be famous (and is thankful that Mencken never reviewed one’s own work). Mencken once called Edith... Read More

Traditionally, literary magazines act as a proving ground, identifying and publishing emerging writers. Unfortunately, most literary magazines are marginal operations, chronically under-funded and faced with daunting problems of... Read More

“What has 16 wheels and a trunk? Tarra—the world’s only roller skating elephant,” read the headlines of the Los Angeles Times in the spring of 1981. Tarra displayed her skating skills in shows around the world, in Korea at an... Read More

Most Americans’ images of Korea extend little further than Hyundais and demilitarized zones and vague stories about eating dogs. This book, which offers fairly generous samplings of three very different Korean poets, may help begin to... Read More