Drexel Week of Writing 2014

I've been working on assembling two cool panel discussions for this year's Week of Writing at Drexel University, May 12-16. The guests are accomplished writers and professionals, and the topics are exciting. Details to be posted soon.

Last year, Nicole Kline helped to organize and participate in a fun and insightful panel where video game designers and video game writers talked about the craft of making video games. Amanda Lange (Tap-Repeatedly), William Stallwood (Cipher Prime), and Chris Grant (Polygon) joined us.

This year? Just you wait.

On the heels of the Mütter Museum. . .

. . .comes The National Kidney Museum.

I wonder what the museum's cafeteria serves?

Okay, okay, I know. I can hear the Onion headline now: English Professor Improves World by Mocking Typo in Local Newspaper.

It's still a funny typo.

To donate to the National Kidney FOUNDATION go to www.kidney.org/

I'm reading HEArt. Why, you ask?

I read HEArt because it is brilliant and tries to make a difference in the struggle for social justice. HEArt (Human Equity through Art) had its first incarnation back at the end of the twentieth century in Pittsburgh. Editor-in-chief, Leslie Anne McIlroy put together a solid little journal full of poetry, essays, interviews, and more--all aimed at contributing to a conversation promoting justice across lines of race, class, gender, and more. As a student in Pittsburgh at the time, I picked up the journal at readings. Each issue exposed me to marginalized writers and perspectives (and some more well-known writers, too), and I loved the blend of art, intellectualism, and activism. I also bought the journal to show support for McIlroy as a professional writer. I found her first book of poetry Rare Space to be straightforward in its look at where relationships can go right, where they can go wrong, and how we must move between spaces that we are forced into and spaces that we craft for ourselves. HEArt is the space for the artist as activist. HEArt took a few years off, and now it's back in an online form. The latest issue is chock-full-of poets, readings, essays, and interviews that don't simply shout into the wind.

The online journal continues to bring together a wide-range of voices in the struggle for social justice. It's worth listening to. Consider contributing, too. A resource like this takes more than love and kind words.

http://heartjournalonline.com/current-issue/

Another Biting Critical Review of Blackberry. . .

The critic finds a new application for a product with notoriously few.