Throughout the year, I had the best intentions to actually generate some material here on my blog. As a penance for missed time, I thought I'd close out the year by pointing to some favorite reads from 2017. There are two rules here: instead of the traditional "best of" lists that float around, everything on... Continue Reading →
News: Sidebar Podcast ep. 1: BK Fischer
I'm excited to announce that a project-in-development is now live! At the Modern Language Studies website, you can find our new fiction and poetry podcast, The Sidebar. For our inaugural episode, I met the poet, editor, and critic BK Fischer at the New York Public Library. Fischer and I talked about her poems in MLS, which perform a feminist... Continue Reading →
The Book We Need Isn’t Orwell’s 1984
Orwell's 1984 may provide us with a vocabulary for critiquing the Trump administration. "Double speak," "thought police": these and other turns of phrase explain the peculiar and insidious ways in which Trump is gaslighting America. (This is a phenomenon that Lauren Duca has explained, incisively, in Teen Vogue.) And while we need 1984's lexicon of authoritarianism, it's not... Continue Reading →
Creative Writing, Service Learning, and Significant Detail: Reflections on a Panel Discussion
Last Wednesday, I participated in a panel discussion about the role of creative writing in service learning. Sponsored by GW's Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, the event paired me with Kendra Thompson of 826DC, a nonprofit that provides young learners with programs and resources that develop their creative and expository writing. Kendra... Continue Reading →
Patrick Thomas Henry 