I follow all sorts of Facebook pages relating to reading and writing. They make me feel a little more connected to others with the same passion to write as me; I’m part of a club of like-minded people who are awesomely cool, (a-k-a nerdy); I’ve finally found my clan! In this time of unrestrained online diatribes, the positive memes these pages post are a refreshing change from the usual Facebook rants. (Why, exactly, does election year take two years to accomplish?) I often w

I discovered an extract of Oxford University Professor Timothy Garton Ash’s book Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World on aeon.com this week. In it, the academic marvels at the strength of certain people throughout history who have risked everything for their beliefs. I was especially drawn to the photo he chose to exemplify those who take a stand. According to Ash, it shows a Hamburg dockworker at the launch of a German naval vessel in 1936. Unlike the rest of hi

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” So said Sylvia Plath. Now I appreciate Sylvia Plath was the poster child for deep, dark insecurities, even while she was carving out a place for herself in the contemporary literary canon, but she definitely had a point. Like Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sylvia Plath, (Hello, my name’s Zoe and I’m a feminist literature freak!), was such a tortured soul she ended own life. Woolf drowned herself at 59; Gilman at 73

I had to stop the presses today and get on my soapbox. (I've featured my post from a couple of days ago about Ernest Hemingway to the right so you don't miss it!) I can’t even begin to describe how upset I am about the outing of Elena Ferrante. Who is Elena Ferrante? That’s a great question! And the proper answer is that we should never know. Yet, the Internet is abuzz this week because an Italian reporter announced that through diligent research of, among other things, perso

Like me until recently, I bet you are unaware of two facts. Firstly, the phrase “Write drunk, edit sober.” was said by someone other than Ernest Hemingway. (It was apparently said by Peter DeVries in his book Ruben, Reuben.) How or why this was misattributed to Hemingway is a mystery, other than it fit his public persona; that of a hard drinking, bullfighting, big-game-hunting man’s man. Secondly, the passport picture above is of Ernest Hemingway, and a very young Ernest Hemi