A cursory review of Western literature and fiction suggests that the instinct to render fictional heroines “hot” has both a long history and one which continues to this day. - LitHub
Oh: "Cliché comes from the printing process when a metal plate was used to physically transfer ink to paper. The term echoes the imitative sound of the plate coming off the page and was a way to represent an image again and again in nearly identical form." - Salon
For instance, global heating "conveys 'more emphatically the seriousness of climate change caused by human activity and the urgent need to address it.' After all, global warming connotes a kind of coziness when there is nothing cozy about a heating planet." - CBC
In the mid-1730s, Robert Walker waged a price war with the London publishing establishment, driving the cost of individual play editions down to just one penny each. This led to a significant expansion of Shakespeare’s readership. - The Conversation
Charles Blow: "Perhaps no other word of the moment is so under attack as “woke,” a word born as a simple yet powerful way of saying, be aware of and alert to how racism is systemic and pervasive and suffuses American life." - The New York Times
"Actors in training get to try out different techniques and approaches, learning to develop a character through movement, script analysis, or emotional connection; they take classes honing their bodies and voices. In my MFA writing program, we got … workshop and some books." - Catapult
Student: "ur text was good but so confusing". Vuong: "mission accomplished". Student: "So u da one that got us all fucked up". Vuong: "Don't let 'em tell you literature can't change lives". - The Guardian
"In 1598, … Sir Thomas Bodley, a retired diplomat and Oxford alumnus, offered to restore the dilapidated university library, entirely at his own cost. … (It) had stood vacant for several decades, its books removed during the upheavals of the Reformation, its furniture sold off." - Literary Hub
Those under 55 may not appreciate just how differently people in the US thought about home cooking before Child's TV shows caught on. For all her pioneering achievements, she was awfully traditional about things like sexuality — until the late 1980s. - The Guardian
The latest plot twist has foreshadowed a potentially unhappy ending. Like the rest of Portland’s urban core — and like downtowns across the United States —Powell’s is contending with staggering uncertainty. - The New York Times
An Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author who lives in Portland, Oregon, El Akkad describes his novel as "a repurposed fable. It's the story of Peter Pan inverted and recast as the story of a contemporary child refugee." - CBC
By using things like imagery, metaphor, narrative and even white space, poetry has the power to make abstract or diffuse issues, like climate change, more real to readers. - The Conversation
Founded under British rule in 1903, the South China Morning Post has managed to stay more or less independent of Beijing. Now a state-owned company is reportedly considering acquiring the paper, though current owner Alibaba (China's equivalent of Amazon) says it's not for sale. - Al Jazeera (Bloomberg)
