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Looked up my ex-boyfriend's Megan's Law profile in my hometown's police station, hands twitching. Back then, you had to write down the reasons for using the computers to look someone up. I wrote, "Finding out background for friend." It wasn't there. More »
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If you're looking to read some sexy sexy prose, you probably shouldn't bother with Stephen King's latest novel 11.22.63, which the Literary Review nominated for the 2011 ‘Bad Sex in Fiction' Award for such titillating passages as this: "She was wearing jeans. The fabric whispered under my palm." Hot. More »
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Emma Stone is reportedly in talks to star in a movie based on a screenplay about cyber datestalking written by a woman who, until last week, was Adam McKay's personal assistant. The script's called He's Fuckin' Perfect, and the writer is currently accepting applications for people interested in officially living vicariously through her. More »
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Last year, four out of the National Book Foundations prestigious "5 under 35" were women. And this year, ladies lead the field again. More »
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Nothing angers online fans quite like an improperly labeled spoiler, as many people think a story will be ruined if they find out beforehand that the hero manages to triumph over the forces of evil. However, a new study challenges the necessity of the "spoiler alert." According to the researchers, I actually enjoyed Fight Club more because my best friend handed me the DVD and said, "I think you're going to like this. It's awesome because Brad Pitt isn't real." More »
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Splitsider reports that the Late Show With David Letterman has hired local stand-up comic Jena Friedman, marking the first time in history that more than one woman has worked on the show's full-time writing staff. (The show's only other female writing staffer joined the team in 2009 — a time when there were no women on the staff, Letterman was amid a work-related sex scandal, and an ex-writer for the show told Vanity Fair it was a "hostile work environment.) You may recognize Jena from this faux Plan B commercial, her rejected American Girl dolls, or her spot-on parody of an NYT Wedding Vows video in which (below). Congrats, Jena! More »
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Research shows that handwriting practice isn't just a useless task your teachers concocted to annoy you — it could actually make kids smarter. More »
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Nobel Prize-winning novelist V.S. Naipaul has helpfully explained why women will never be great writers like him. It's because they're not "masters of a house." More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5807943&view=rss&microfeed=true Kate Swift, whose books Words and Women and The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing how using only masculine pronouns and other words excludes and devalues women, has died of stomach cancer at the age of 87. Thanks to her, many publications have stopped using gendered terminology like "fireman" and "stewardess." More »
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After home canning, chicken husbandry, and fixed-gear bicycles, what old practice is next in line to be revived and embraced by hip young urbanites? Answer: typing on typewriters. More »
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Ever spend an hour staring at your screen, struggling to compose an email that strikes just the right balance between polite and friendly, only to give up and go browse on Zappos? Us too! But with the tips below, none of us will have to wander the wasteland of email uncertainty any longer. More »
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Amanda Hocking's story isn't just interesting because, at 26 years old, she's a millionaire from selling eBooks. Her tale is also fascinating because it remains a work in progress. Success brings new challenges, one of which is often defending that success. Something Hocking is having to do. More »
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After a post last month about the gender disparity in magazine publishing, which was followed by VIDA's much more thorough and ultimately conclusive study, I, perhaps naively, expected to see a comment or two from the publications about the roots of this imbalance. Then weeks passed, and, well, basically nothing. For a while I thought that perhaps it was time to give this up. They had all likely seen the numbers; I didn't want to come off whiny. But then my curiosity remained, and I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. More »
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VIDA has counted up the female writers — and female-authored books reviewed at a variety of publications — and these charts detail their dismal results (dudes are in red). So what's behind this inequality? More »
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"I came across an axiom in a passage from a culinary memoir called Heat in which the author, Bill Buford, observes the following: 'You can divide people into two categories in life: cooks and bakers.'" More here. More »
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British writer Rowan Somerville has won the Literary Review's Bad Sex Writing prize for likening coitus to "a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect." Maybe the lady in question was wearing a sexy bug costume? More »
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that college students love running around naked. And grownups love reading about it. More »
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Anna Davies wanted to make a name for herself, so she wrote about her sexual encounters, viewing it as an "easy" path toward getting published. But now she wants to be a "real" writer. Whatever that means. More »
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At their New Yorker Festival reading Friday, writers Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon demonstrated that writing across gender and class is not as hard as it seems. More »
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She boasted that though she's "the Tolstoy of text [messages]," she's also writing a story "that The New Yorker, by the way, does not know is coming...I want to be published. It's time—I'm 46." Editors, you've been warned. More »
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Ben Affleck directed and starred in The Town, the number-one movie in the country this weekend. The guys in the fast-paced, bank-heist thriller were complex, well- written characters. The women? According to one reader who emailed us: Not so much. More »
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The kerfuffle over Jonathan Franzen's Freedom prompts one critic to ask, "Can a Woman Be a 'Great American Novelist?'" But maybe it's time to change how we think of greatness. More »
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What happened when 25-year-old Savannah Dooley — writer of ABC Family's weight-loss camp drama, Huge, and the daughter of My So-Called Life's Winnie Holzman — emailed us to say that Jezebel was her favorite blog? More »
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Most of you could probably use a little poetry in your lives.  We've mashed our brains together and made a list of ten amazing queer ladysexy poets that you should check out right now, if you haven't already. More »
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People are obviously reading too much these days. That must be why one critic felt the need to list the 15 writers (9 of them women) we should all stop reading right now. More »
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A recent essay in the Times points out that "rules for drinking are not so different from rules for writing." If that's true, then clearly famous literary stars need their own drinking games. A few suggestions, after the jump. More »
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It happens again and again. You read someone's life story, feel you know them, thrill to their romance — idealize it, even. And then, without a word to you, they end it. And it's traumatic! More »
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I Write Like tells you which famous writer's style your words resemble. Of course we tried it on ourselves — and a few other luminaries. More »
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She tells Marie Claire: "Everyone in my life knows whenever something happens, the only way it's going to be over and finished and put to bed is if it's written about." The unexamined life is not worth living! [Just Jared] More »
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Australian writer Steph Bowe got a book deal at fifteen, but felt like a failure for not publishing at thirteen or fourteen. Sounds insane — except that I can relate. More »
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In And The Heart Says Whatever, Emily Gould set out to flout the traditions of many women's memoirs. Her book is the antithesis of personal growth narratives like Eat, Pray, Love — and she may like it that way. More »
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For writer Marisa Silver, advice to the lovelorn and to aspiring writers is really the same thing, since both are bound for heartache. Best words of wisdom? "Don't panic." [TheElegantVariation via NYT] More »
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Anne Lamott is a rare breed — a liberal Christian who writes publicly about faith, politics, and family. Her writing about spirituality has bothered me in the past — but a new interview may have won me over. More »
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This list of metaphors and analogies from high-schoolers' submissions to a humor contest is a goldmine of unintended truisms: "The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work." [QWERTY via Sullivan] More »
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A study finds that the - often unconscious - societal practice of putting male names before female names in writing and addresses is "a remnant of sexist thinking" dating back to the 16th Century. [Science Daily] More »
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This weekend the Guardian compiled lists of rules for writing by a variety of famous authors — the result is either fascinating or enraging, depending on how you feel about writing, lists, and advice. More »
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"Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it." [CNN] More »
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The book world's latest teen plagiarist is German author/playwright/screenwriter Helene Hegemann, whose lifting of work by other authors is apparently just what kids are doing these days. More »
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"What with the blood-like floor and the heaps of ash-coloured concrete intestines, these works were forcing me to think about bodies and new life, and even death," writes Isabella Welch of artist Anish Kapoor. Welch is 10 years old. More »
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French author Camille Laurens is accusing another writer of "psychological plagiarism" for supposedly retelling the story of Laurens's son's death. Reading the "plagiarized" work, Laurens says, "I had the feeling that it had been written in my bedroom." [UPI.com] More »
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