Things are not good for Sweetness O’Hara. A shy, studious girl in a rough neighborhood, Sweetness (the captivating Zöe Kravitz) is bullied at school and alternately abused and ignored by her alcoholic father and mentally ill mother. When she finally hits her breaking point, things get even worse—if you can believe it. Director Victoria Mahoney has cast a talented ensemble, featuring Precious star Gabourey Sidibe, Tim Blake ... Read More

I celebrated the 25th anniversary of my birth on Monday. Well, maybe “celebrated” isn’t the right word for it. I expected worse, to be honest. I thought I might suffer an existential crisis, brought on in part by Facebook’s new Timeline feature, which makes it seem like I was born in 1987 and then did nothing until 2005, when I went to college and got a Facebook and started recording my life in short, sometimes ... Read More

Today my sister turns 17 years old. When I was 17, I asked one of my friends to cut off all of my hair in her bathroom in a spontaneous burst of self-reinvention. I had my first serious boyfriend. I failed my driving test, not for the last time. I was in love with Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional. I started making zines, and I was 17 when I decided where to apply for university. In the same year I had sex for the first ... Read More