In Battleborn, a collection of short stories, Claire Vaye Watkins recreates the rich and complicated history of the desert regions of California and Nevada. The title is derived from one of Nevada’s nicknames, The Battle Born State, which it earned by becoming a state during the Civil War. Similarly, the ghosts of past battles are never far away from the characters’ minds as they struggle through life. Watkins succeeds at using ... Read More

  Oksana Marafioti’s memoir brings to light a minority culture that most people have very little knowledge of beyond TLC’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Yes, Marafioti does write about one of those extravagant affairs, in which she donned a mango-colored taffeta gown and teased her hair to the heavens, but the strength of her book lies in the way it makes her Romani family, who moved to California in the early ’90s, and ... Read More

In Overdressed, New York-based writer Elizabeth Cline explores the extreme decline in the cost of fashion, and the political, economic, and social implications of this change. Cline begins with a personal yet familiar anecdote: she once bought seven pairs of $7 shoes in a single haul, only to eventually throw half of them out without having worn them once. Most of us who grew up in the ’90s practice Cline’s former shopping ... Read More

Chicago-based artist and illustrator Lilli Carré creates magical characters in her comics and animations. Whether she’s telling the tale of a mythical singing sea monster, a stone-skipping woodsman, or a sister-run joke-writing business, she manages to create work that's altogether thought-provoking, sincere, and relatable. I was introduced to Carré’s work with her 2008 debut graphic novel The Lagoon, which also ... Read More

In case you guys missed the MTV movie awards (I did, there was a Law & Order marathon and then Girls was on, so I was all booked up), one very significant thing happened outside of a bunch of celebrities taking home a bunch more awards: The Perks of Being a Wallflower trailer happened.   Starring Emma Watson, Nina Dobrev, Mae Whitman, and the relatively unknown Logan Lerman as everyone's favorite antisocial protagonist Charlie, the ... Read More