“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” — Douglas Adams Like many great things, Douglas Adams’ life was gone too soon—today marks his 65th birthday. The humorist and novelist wrote one of the funniest, most recognizable science fiction series that has garnered a…
Tag: Blog
REMEMBERING THE LIFE OF MICHAEL S. HART AND HOW HE CHANGED READING FOREVER BY LAURA RUTTAN
“20 or 30 years from now, there’s going to be some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pockets that has everything in it-including our books, if they want.” — Michael Hart, 1998 Michael Stern Hart was the legendary founder of Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library,…
Am I being too pedantic? By Emily Zimmer
“Vocabulary enables us to interpret and to express. If you have a limited vocabulary, you will also have a limited vision and a limited future.” — Jim Rohn New words have always been drilled into our minds. Initially small and minimal in complexity, vocabulary was learned through spelling tests and…
America’s Great Black Hope by Sten Spinella
I’ve been doing some thinking on Kendrick Lamar lately. His new album, untitled unmastered is great, but that is to be expected. I don’t have any more to say on it than your average music reviewer does. I want to get into something different. I want to address the fact…
Remembering Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol By Emily Catenzaro
“It is well-known that there are many faces in the world over the finishing of which nature did not take much trouble, did not employ any fine tools such as files, gimlets, and so on, but simply hacked them out with round strokes: one chop-a nose appears; another chop-lips appear;…
Does Anyone Really Know What Alt-Lit is? by Alexandra Cichon
My freshman year of college, spring semester 2013, I found myself standing on a rooftop in Brooklyn with people I didn’t know. What we did have in common was our ability to Instagram the Manhattan skyline and our following of alt-lit, or Alternative Literature. The semester before, I had discovered…
To Prompt, or Not to Prompt, That is the Question by Theresa Kurzawa
It’s the kind of question you ask yourself, as a writer, when you’re stuck on what to write about. Should you venture into the dangerous and confusing world of Writing Prompts, or should you leave your writing decisions to your own imagination? There are a lot of pros and cons…
Storytelling with WNPR by Allison McLellan
Storytelling is the original form of entertainment used to pass on legends and histories, and to pass the time. But now we have more stimulating forms of entertainment—Xbox360, Netflix, YouTube, etc. You can’t have a conversation without maybe half of the faces being immersed in a smartphone screen at any…
Where did the quotation mark go? by Steph Koo
We are approaching copyediting time at the Long River Review and it has me thinking about grammar, punctuation, and writing style—leading me to this question: Why do some authors do away with the quotation mark in dialogue? Perhaps I am noticing it more as I am reading more “serious literature”…
Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Good: A review of Diane Williams’ new book Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine By Carleton Whaley
“Young farmers and rural characters, obstetrical nurses, scholars, clergy—all the rest!—will have their great hopes realized more often than not—unless I decide to tell their stories.” — from “Head of the Big Man” by Diane Williams As a first time reader of Diane Williams, I wasn’t sure what to expect….