Carmen Maria Machado talks to Electric Literature about Carmilla, a vampire novel by J. Sheridan LeFanu that predates Dracula by two decades and is now being reissued by Lanternfish Press with an introduction by Machado. “The connection between narratives of vampires and narratives of women—especially queer women—are almost laughably obvious,” she says. “The hunger for blood, the presence of monthly blood, the influence and effects of the moon, the moon as a feminine celestial body, the moon as a source of madness, the mad woman, the mad lesbian—it goes on and on. It is somewhat surprising to me that we have ever imagined male vampires at all.”
The New Republic has added more editorial staff. Former Gawker editor Alex Pareene and New Republic contributor Walter Shapiro are joining as a staff writers, while Gregg Levine has been hired as a senior editor.
After a failed attempt to sell the magazine, Meredith has decided to shut down the print edition of Money.
For Literary Hub, Aaron Robertson talks to Jack Jones Literary Arts founders Kima Jones and LaToya Watkins about their new Culture, Too initiative, their newly announced week-long conference for writers of color.
Columbia Journalism Review’s Mathew Ingram argues that the US government’s case against Julian Assange is a threat to investigative journalists. “There’s no question Julian Assange is a reprehensible person in a number of ways, which makes holding him up as a defender of press freedom more than a little problematic,” he writes. “But we don’t get to choose the individuals who provide an opportunity for us to defend free speech and journalism, and it’s hard to argue that Assange is any worse than Larry Flynt or any of the other reprobates who have helped shape First Amendment law.”
Soccer player Abby Wambach talks to the New York Times’s By the Book column about Andre Agassi, how reading has impacted her career, and her new book, Wolfpack. “I found my way to soccer because of a book,” she said. “My sister Beth told my mom she wanted to learn to play soccer so my mom went to the library and checked out a book called ‘How to Play Soccer.’ Our family read it, signed us all up for teams, and I scored 27 goals in my first three games. I guess I do owe it all to books.”