The 19th century Russian novelists have a reputation for dense (for many an AP high school student, nightmarishly dense) character studies, giant tomes that spend the majority of their considerable bulk methodically dissecting characters and mapping out how they tick — and of those characters, one of the most fascinating…
The challenge of writing a character who is a part of a marginalized group — say blacks, Hispanics or, in the case of Tomas Mournian’s Hidden, a gay teenager — is that all too often the drama of suffering overwhelms the character’s humanity; instead of developing into believable people, these…
Time to graduate from Fabio-embossed bodice-rippers and your dog-eared library copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Join your fellow Denverites as they whip out their favorite dirty reads when the Center for Sex Positive Culture joins forces with Smitten Kitten (70 Broadway) to host their first Erotic Spoken Word night, tonight…
Evalyn Walsh McLean was famous for the blowouts she threw on short notice at the Brown Palace for Denver’s society swells — ice elephants filled with caviar, Bollinger ’26, dance bands, the works. But in the depths of the Depression she took the Hope diamond to pawnshops to try to…
Zine author Enola Dismay doesn’t like to stay in one place too long; she’s 26 and just now “realizing that it’s becoming harder and harder to stay in one place. The main reason,” she adds, “is because when I settle down somewhere, I overload myself with projects, overextend myself and…
Keeping Enemies Closer, the first novel from Littleton writer L.D. Stevens, is billed as a thriller, but it’s arguable that it’s closer to a fantasy. Not because the elements of a thriller (intrigue, plot twists, fear) aren’t there, and not because the elements of what the literary term “fantasy” implies…
For a project that centers around grief, it’s coincidentally a fitting time of year for Andrea Moore to begin her work in PlatteForum’s artist residency. An artistic jack-of-all-trades, the writer, photographer and performer moved into PlatteForum yesterday to begin her six-week residency there, during which she’ll be putting together a…
Christian Lander, author of the popular website and book series Stuff White People Like, will be at the Tattered Cover, Lodo on Thursday to promote his newest book, Whiter Shades of Pale. Unlike the broad strokes of his previous endeavors, Lander’s new book takes a closer look at the stuff…
Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn will be scrubbed of its 219 uses of the word “nigger” in a new edition to be published by NewSouth. They say the edit is an attempt to return the book to classroom literature requirements, where its use of the slur (as well as the…
Since the establishment of horror as a legit genre somewhere around the late ’70s, it’s always been almost a tradition to infuse the gore with a liberal amount of sex — and in a literary sense, few have been as shameless about those twin preoccupations than Mario Acevedo, whose credits…
As a character, the old hard-drinking, plucky-with-a-stubborn-streak-about-a-mile-wide female musician who’s getting older and washed up and needs a chance at a redemption that might just be a little closer to home than she thinks is hardly in short supply (see Gwyneth Paltrow in the upcoming Country Strong, for example). Still,…
Denver’s Minor Disturbance youth Slam Team made history for the local poetry scene earlier this year when they appeared in Brave New Voices, the HBO special that followed the 2010 National Slam Team championships held in L.A. Denver’s team won fourth place in the global competition, but many had issues…
Of all the expressive media, probably the most exclusive tend to be poetry and abstract art. They’re dense, demanding and heavily symbolic, and they’re hard to interpret without some background of study — all of which gives them a reputation for elitism and pretension. Still, those same qualities are what…
People read novels for two major reasons: for a good yarn, first and foremost, but also to be immersed in a world that’s different from the one they occupy — not just to learn about how it works, but to feel it, to experience its dramas and to know the…
Warning: This article contains spoilers concerning the entire plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Normally when I sit down to watch a new Harry Potter movie in theaters, I’m excited to see how the story plays out on screen. But after director Daniel Yates’ criminal bungling of Harry…
Much like God dictated the Bible to its various writers, a dog named Pukka dictated Pukka to its author, Ted Kerasote. Or at least that’s the conceit. The follow-up to Merle’s Door, a book someone named Elizabeth Marshall Thomas called “The best book ever written about dogs” (so the book…
The music of Wolfgang Amadaeus Mozart was both a haven and an inspiration for Albert Einstein. When the physicist would get stuck on a particularly puzzling problem regarding the nature of the universe, he would pick up a violin and turn on a different part of his brain. Along with…
Perhaps more than ever in this reality show age we live in, it can be difficult to know what the hell famous people are even famous for — and nobody, besides maybe Paris Hilton, exemplifies that “famous for being famous” phenomenon better than Tila Tequila. In her completely un-clamored-for memoir,…
Recently, there have been a slew of ill-advised memoirs from people far too young and inexperienced to share their stories with the world. Steve Katz doesn’t have that problem. The 75-year-old Denver author started writing his memoir five years ago, and it has since become a collection of over 100…
You can’t judge a book by its cover — and it just goes to show you, because the cover of The Wishing Trees, by John Shors, is pretty awful. Decked out in pink with an apple blossom and a soft-focus photo, it might as well be an advertisement for a…
Perhaps more than any president in recent memory, and like so many truly terrible people, George W. Bush was fond of playing up his godliness — apparently, if you fold your hands and screw up your face like you’re solving a Rubik’s Cube for long enough, that’ll get you the…
If you like the idea of combining Vampires with sex in literature but think Twilight is ass-clown hackery for prudes, then Vampire Nite is where you want to be tonight. And if you don’t, why the fuck not? Vampires are awesome. Sex is awesome. What’s there not to like? Anyway,…
