As far as fictional characters go, there is maybe no archetype so boring as the Hero, that figure of unwavering nobility and poise. Whether that hero is deftly vanquishing foes like Superman or valiantly overcoming adversity a la Odysseus, the construct is the same: The Hero represents the David-like ideal…
We generally don’t think much about who is narrating our stories, but in the case of Benjamin Hale’s new novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, we have to. Mostly because the narrator is an ape. Hale, who grew up in and around Boulder but who currently lives in New York,…
John Rodwan Jr. has long been writing critically about music, boxing and literature. His essays have found homes in The American Interest, The Mailer Review, Blood and Thunder, Open Letters Monthly, and Spot Literary Magazine, among others. Last year, he published a book, Fighters and Writers, examining the relationship between…
In the way that anything has at least its category in common with its opposite (red is the opposite of green, for example, but they’re both colors), a magazine and a zine are opposites: Where magazines tend to be slick, polished and pandering (ours excepted, of course — we never…
At some point in the career of many a celebrity (probably too many a celebrity) comes the dubious decision of writing a memoir, a book people will read presumably on the basis that it’s written by a famous person. Of course, for most of those famous people, it actually isn’t…
Watching the Whirlwind Company deliver their energetic brand of live verse at the Mercury Café on Wednesday night felt a bit like being in the crowd for a Cream show. Indeed, taking in the combined forces of Mindy Nettifee, Brian Ellis, Jon Sands and Mike McGee — along with a…
Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning in New York, making it one more casualty of the continuing slow death of physical media. Six Colorado stores will close in the coming weeks, though none of the Denver locations. They’ve still got some time to right this thing, but it…
Penguin Books, eager to eclipse Twilight with a new moon of its own, sharpened its stakes and rounded up five authors of hot new fantasy titles for Young Adult readers from its various imprints, unleashing them on the world for the Breathless Reads National Book Tour, which haunts the Tattered…
Cindi Myers used to be a newspaper reporter, and in many ways, that’s apparent in Work of Heart (how about that title, amiright?), her latest. For one thing, it’s a “reality-based romance,” which apparently means that the couple in the story is based on a real-life couple; more importantly, though,…
When I talked with back-to-back-to-back Super Bowl Chili Cookoff Champion Kevin Richards just days before the Denver Zine Library’s 5th Annual competition, the Librarian wasn’t exactly cocky, but was armed with the sort of innocent charm that says, My Nonchalance Is a Cover For My Awesomeness. Which was fair, considering…
The 19th century Russian novelists have a reputation for dense (for many an AP high school student, nightmarishly dense) character studies, giant tomes that spend the majority of their considerable bulk methodically dissecting characters and mapping out how they tick — and of those characters, one of the most fascinating…
The challenge of writing a character who is a part of a marginalized group — say blacks, Hispanics or, in the case of Tomas Mournian’s Hidden, a gay teenager — is that all too often the drama of suffering overwhelms the character’s humanity; instead of developing into believable people, these…
Time to graduate from Fabio-embossed bodice-rippers and your dog-eared library copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Join your fellow Denverites as they whip out their favorite dirty reads when the Center for Sex Positive Culture joins forces with Smitten Kitten (70 Broadway) to host their first Erotic Spoken Word night, tonight…
Evalyn Walsh McLean was famous for the blowouts she threw on short notice at the Brown Palace for Denver’s society swells — ice elephants filled with caviar, Bollinger ’26, dance bands, the works. But in the depths of the Depression she took the Hope diamond to pawnshops to try to…
Zine author Enola Dismay doesn’t like to stay in one place too long; she’s 26 and just now “realizing that it’s becoming harder and harder to stay in one place. The main reason,” she adds, “is because when I settle down somewhere, I overload myself with projects, overextend myself and…
Keeping Enemies Closer, the first novel from Littleton writer L.D. Stevens, is billed as a thriller, but it’s arguable that it’s closer to a fantasy. Not because the elements of a thriller (intrigue, plot twists, fear) aren’t there, and not because the elements of what the literary term “fantasy” implies…
For a project that centers around grief, it’s coincidentally a fitting time of year for Andrea Moore to begin her work in PlatteForum’s artist residency. An artistic jack-of-all-trades, the writer, photographer and performer moved into PlatteForum yesterday to begin her six-week residency there, during which she’ll be putting together a…
Christian Lander, author of the popular website and book series Stuff White People Like, will be at the Tattered Cover, Lodo on Thursday to promote his newest book, Whiter Shades of Pale. Unlike the broad strokes of his previous endeavors, Lander’s new book takes a closer look at the stuff…
Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn will be scrubbed of its 219 uses of the word “nigger” in a new edition to be published by NewSouth. They say the edit is an attempt to return the book to classroom literature requirements, where its use of the slur (as well as the…
Since the establishment of horror as a legit genre somewhere around the late ’70s, it’s always been almost a tradition to infuse the gore with a liberal amount of sex — and in a literary sense, few have been as shameless about those twin preoccupations than Mario Acevedo, whose credits…
As a character, the old hard-drinking, plucky-with-a-stubborn-streak-about-a-mile-wide female musician who’s getting older and washed up and needs a chance at a redemption that might just be a little closer to home than she thinks is hardly in short supply (see Gwyneth Paltrow in the upcoming Country Strong, for example). Still,…
Denver’s Minor Disturbance youth Slam Team made history for the local poetry scene earlier this year when they appeared in Brave New Voices, the HBO special that followed the 2010 National Slam Team championships held in L.A. Denver’s team won fourth place in the global competition, but many had issues…
