The theme for this year’s International Open Access Week is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, a question that ought to be nonsensical, but which is becoming ever more urgent. I cannot help but think about Open Access (OA) within the current context both of our world generally and also my own world […]
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of leading a discussion with Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy, co-director of punctum books and editor of my punctum book, About That Life: Barry Lopez and the Art of Community. This was part of my regular academic work, as it was a program I set up via […]
In an interview with Steven Millhauser at the LA Review of Books, Kevin Koczwara asks, “Is there something that you love about the short story form? Today, it seems, short stories are out of style for one reason or another. Maybe they never were in vogue—I am thinking of how John […]
This is the text of a paper I presented at the Modernist Studies Association annual conference, which this year took place in Brooklyn, New York, not far from where James Purdy lived for many years. Since I don’t have plans to develop this particular presentation beyond what it was, I […]
I felt guilty packing a bunch of gay male novels and story collections from the 1980s and early 1990s into a couple boxes and putting them in the attic, but I need shelf space for books I regularly read. Once upon a time, I dreamed of writing a book about […]
I’ve just finished attending the 2019 International Virginia Woolf Conference, a marvelous event focused this year on questions of Woolf and social justice. Most (but not all) of the attendees were affiliated in some way with academia, and one of the questions that recurred through the conference was: How do […]
Years ago, Amazon included bookmarks with their orders, and one of the bookmarks offered a loose translation of Erasmas: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” I’ve more or less lived my life by similar principles. (I bought […]