Braille: You’ve seen it, you've felt it, but unless you or someone close to you is visually impaired, you might not have thought much about it. I was one of those people — aware of the importance of braille for blind readers but without any real…

Every college has a bookstore, but think about yours — what was the ratio of books to other crap? The first college I went to was in a small city and the school had a bunch of mini-convenience stores, so the bookstore ended up selling fairly…

“I want to tell my stories,” Lena Dunham writes in her new book Not That Kind of Girl, “and, more than that, I have to in order to stay sane.” Dunham must be feeling very grounded, then: Not That Kind of Girl is stuffed to the gills with…

You might think you know all there is to know about Lena Dunham: She’s not exactly the poster-child for coyness. But like every good writer, Dunham’s got an arsenal of secrets to tantalize readers with in her new book Not That Kind of Girl, and each…

You may have heard that Lena Dunham’s first book, Not That Kind of Girl, was just released. Her collection of essays (and a few lists) touch on the kind of things you’d expect the Girls creator to write about: therapy, internet crushes during the…

"Alt lit." Do you know what it is? Does anyone know what it is? Here's what I've scraped together: it’s not quite alternative literature, as the name would suggest, but shorthand for "hipster lit" (referencing Hipster Runoff’s tendency to call…

One of my favorite professors in college told me that at an annual English professor conference (it had a fancier title, I'm sure), she and a group of new friends played a game during some downtime; over drinks, they all had to go around and say one…

What did you do during your college years? For most people, college is a time to cultivate new friendships and explore newfound academic interests. I spent my four years writing long papers about presidential libraries and feminist food theory,…

I’ve never had an easy time falling asleep — I can’t quite turn my brain off most nights, and I always need an activity to separate my day from my night, a little bit of relaxation to mark time. For me and for many others, reading a book is just the…

Did your alma mater have a freshman reading requirement? The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last year that programs in which schools ask all first years to read a specific book before school starts were held in more than 300 colleges.…

There are some things every hotel room should have — small bottles of shampoo in the shower, pens to write postcards with, a functional alarm clock, and clean towels. These are a given. Almost all hotels you will stay at will also have a Gideon…

There are some books that are as helpful when you’re sick as a heaping spoonful of chicken noodle soup — and no, they aren't all part of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series (yup, remember those?). I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently while…

Some of the best parts of books are their settings — and those settings sure stand out now that we’re in full-on summer vacation mode. Although it’s tempting to want to experience the real-world places where your favorite characters exist (Holden…

The ultimate dream for most bloggers: Get a book deal. And why not — plenty of bloggers have turned their online projects into tangible ones. Just think: Julie Powell's Julie & Julia (that turned into a movie, too!); Blair Koenig’s hilarious STFU,…

Women across the world and in all different cultures are taught from an early age to speak quietly, not to swear, to begin questions with apologies and qualifiers, and to wait to speak until they’re spoken to. Writing is a realm in which women can…

What are reproductive rights? On the large scale, they’re the right to freely decide the course of your sexual and reproductive choices. On the smaller scale, they’re being able to choose if, when, and how you’ll have a child and being able to make…

During college, my professor asked us to bring in a book that we thought was a great example of how to write about women’s lives. My peers brought in copies of Zami, The Second Sex, and The Well of Loneliness, among others. I brought in Ramona, Age…

I come from an old, Jewish family: a group of men all named Abraham, and women who compete over the best brisket among them. We eat gefilte fish and tongue and chopped liver. We have a gallows sense of humor — “Could’ve just stayed in the shtetl,”…

Trans rights, according to Time magazine’s cover, are “America’s next civil rights frontier.” This announcement comes not a moment too soon; a push for trans rights and acceptance is on the rise, amid a bullying epidemic and staggeringly high rates…

We may have all been wrong about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret: Whole generations of readers regard the Judy Blume novel as utter menstrual mythology. Read it as an adult, though, and you'll see that it’s so much more. I re-read the book…