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Words into hype

Literary essay: Akin to the personal essay, only with bigger words and more profound content… Chris Offutt decodes lofty writer speak.

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A Q&A with Hannah Tinti about Salem & good thieves

Tonight at Housing Works, I’m hosting Witches, Demons, and Thieves, a Puritan Halloween celebration (costumes optional) featuring authors Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief) and Kathleen Kent (The Heretic’s Daughter), and artist Michael Aaron Lee, a friend whose magnificent forest paintings I first praised here a couple years ago. Last month I posted a mini-interview with Kent, and now here’s a . . .

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Unexpected afflictions & adventures in London & beyond

We were in London ten hours or so before I came down with a cold. Since I refused to stay in the hotel and rest, the thing burgeoned so that, on the very bizarre flight* home, I went through, seriously, eight or nine tissue mini-packs. Not to mention a half box of Fisherman’s Friend. After I sneezed into the first . . .

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