By Julia H. Jackson
Matthew Clark Davison is, among other things, a fiction writer, lecturer at San Francisco State University, an Artist Mentor with the San Francisco Performing Arts Workshop, a private writing coach, and teacher of a non-academic writing workshop called The Douglass Street Lab. He also is the Faculty Advisor for the SFSU graduate literary magazine Fourteen Hills. His novel manuscript ROADMAP won the Clark/Gross Novel-in-Progress Contest and was granted a Stonewall Alumni Association Award for excellence. His current novel manuscript, Letters to the Dead, was awarded a Cultural Equities Grant from The City of San Francisco. His short stories have been published in The Atlantic Monthly’s Unbound, 580 Split, and Lodestar Quarterly. These days he teaches eight classes a week, and yet nearly every night he still makes time to write. He agreed to offer some tips for young writers for this second installment of our series on Writing Careers—Real Tips From Real Writers.
Read the rest of this entry »
By: Garin Kilpatrick
Halloween is almost here! Do you have your costume figured out? No? Me either. So, we at Eduify thought we’d help you out. Below are five Halloween costume ideas derived from books, which means you have the added bonus of being able to carry the book your costume is from (just kidding). Is your Halloween costume from a literary character? Let us know what you are going to dress up as this Halloween in the comments below!
1. Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde
Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde is known for its vivid portrayal of a man with a severe case of a split personality. Split in the sense that within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality, and both personalities are quite unique and seemingly unaware of each other.
The impact of Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” coming to refer to anyone with bipolar patterns of behavior.
This costume idea has the double feature of being both creepy and exceptionally cool if you can pull it off!
2. Tyler Durden from Fight Club
Yeah, there was a book written by Chuck Palahniuk before the Movie. The main character in the book is: Tyler Durden. He’s a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club begins a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp.
A successful Tyler Durden costume requires following this simple 3 step process:
Step 1. Buy Pink Soap
Step 2. Carve Fight Club Into the soap
Step 3. Get some blood on your face and knuckles. Fake blood of course.
And you’re good to go!
3. Alice of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
The Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, The Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle, and the Cheshire Cat are characters who could only have come from Lewis Carroll, the master of sublime nonsense. There are a lot of characters to choose from, however, we think Alice is the most worthy for our list.
With these two stories Louis Carroll created two of the most famous and fantastic novels of all time that not only stirred imaginations, but also revolutionized literature through joyful absurdity.
4. Harry Potter
Now is the perfect time to dress up as Harry Potter for Halloween because the final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows just came out so all die hard Potter fans are feeling the bittersweetness of the end of Harry Potter. The final Potter book has no shortage of gore and features a battlefield littered with the bodies of the dearest and despised. So, dress up as Harry before it’s too late.
You can Easily make your own Harry Potter Costume for Halloween.
Here is what you need to be Harry Potter for Halloween:
- Simple, Black Robe
- Wizard Hat
- Magic Wand
- Broom
- Lightning Bolt Scar
- Pouch
- Round Glasses
- White Tape
5. The Tin Man (or Woman) from the Wizard of Oz
One of the true classics of American literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was originally published in 1900, so this fairy tale is 109 Years old in 2009.
Some of the familiar characters include Dorothy, of course, and her dog Todo. There is also a Cornfield Scarecrow, a lion, a mechanical woodman, and a humbug wizard, and the Tin Man.
Tell us what you’re costume is going to be this Halloween on the Eduify Facebook Page!
Can you think of any cool characters from a book that would make a good Halloween Costume?
By: Julia Jackson
Meet Larry Smith
Meet Larry Smith: writer-editor extraordinaire. His writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Men’s Journal, Popular Science, Slate, and Salon. He was also the senior editor at ESPN The Magazine, executive editor at Yahoo! Internet Life, articles editor at Men’s Journal, founding editor of P.O.V., editor-in-chief of Egg, and an editor of Dave Eggers’ Might magazine. His online magazine, SMITH Mag, provides a host of resources for everyday writers, and also features the Six-Word Memoir project, which has produced enough memorable memoirs to publish a series of Six Word anthologies. He enthusiastically agreed to answer some questions for us for our third installment of Writing Careers: Real Tips from Real Writers.
Read the rest of this entry »
By: Garin Kilpatrick
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov was Isaac’s favorite Short Story. Even after I read this story over at least twenty times for this podcast, it remains my favorite short story ever.
The Last Question was just one of over 500 books and over 6,000 letters and short stories Isaac wrote, to give you an idea of just how prolific he was. Check out this list of short stories by Isaac Asimov if you want some more Asimov after you listen to The Last Question podcast. Asimov has my personal recommendation as an Author because anything I have ever read by him has been thought provoking and worthwhile.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Raven, from http://xkcd.com/
By Julia H. Jackson
Imagine that your significant other has recently fallen ill. You are an orphaned adult. Everyone who is close to you is slowly dying of tuberculosis, or as you call it, consumption. You can’t sleep. You fidget. You wait by your writing table and contemplate the slow descent of humanity. And suddenly, there is a knock at your door.
I should mention that you are a sometimes-successful editor of literary magazines. It is 1845.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.’”
Read the rest of this entry »
