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Academic

Understanding Creative Non-Fiction

A note to aspiring writers. “It is a way of looking again and again at itself from all angles in order to see itself most fully.” – Bret Lott on creative nonfiction. An area of publishing that is getting increasingly popular is the field of creative non-fiction (also known as literary non-fiction). From the onset, however, the term itself sounds like an oxymoron. How can non-fiction be literature? Welcome, to the topic of today’s post.  Creative non-fiction (CNF) refers to a piece of writing that uses typical literary styles or techniques (such as figurative language, playing with tenses and/or narrative…

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Books

Snap by Belinda Bauer – Book Review

Snap by Belinda Bauer (Penguin Random House, Bantam Press) “On a stifling summer’s day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack’s in charge, she’d said. I won’t be long. But she doesn’t come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed forever.” While a very popular genre, crime novels have never been at the top of my reading lists. Not for lack of interest! I went through a phase in high school when I bought and burnt through every Kathy…

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Reflections

Choosing the Perfect Plane Novel

I travel a lot. Generally speaking, I’m on a plane every month or so. Whether it be long haul or short haul flights, I spend a decent amount of time per year in the air. So for me, it is extremely important that this time is actually meaningful. Now, I will openly tell you, I am not the most fond of flying. In fact, that is a pretty big understatement. I hate it. The claustrophobic feeling of being stuck in a box for a number of hours without any fresh air, knowing that at any moment you could plummet to…

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Reviews

“Jane the Virgin” and Satire

Jane the Virgin is easily one of the most intriguing, multifaceted shows out there right now. Advertised as a “satirical romantic comedy-drama telenovela” (say that five times fast), Jane the Virgin heaps a lot onto its plate, and manages to succeed every moment of the way. Without spoiling too many of the key plot points, the show’s premise is about satirizing the dramatic, unrealistic elements of soap operas (in this case, specifically Spanish telenovelas) and transferring it to the real world. In Jane the Virgin, Jane Villanueva (played by the inimitable Gina Rodriguez), her mother, and her grandmother avidly watch…

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