Stephanie Nikolopoulos's Blog, page 62

Life after the MFA

As thesis submission deadline approached, people began asking me what I was planning on doing after graduation.  Then they’d stop themselves, afraid they may have asked too painful of a question.  But it’s not! In one of my last posts, I left off telling you about grabbing a cup of tea after turning my theses [...]

Greek Goddess Skin with Korres Pomegranate Toner & Korres Pomegranate Mattifying Treatment

Thanks to Persephone eating those seeds of the pomegranate, we now experience the changing of the seasons, according to Greek mythology.  Now that spring has sprung and summer is around the corner, modern Greek goddesses are spending more time outdoors and less time caking on makeup.  These warm months are all about catching free summer [...]

Happy 86th Birthday, Allen Ginsberg!

  “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” ~Allen Ginsberg   Today would’ve been Allen Ginsberg’s 86th birthday.  In celebration, here are a couple of links::: 2012 Howl Festival Howl [...]

Sneak Peek of the Burning Furiously Beautiful Cover

Here’s a sneak peek of the cover design for Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which I am co-authoring with critically acclaimed Kerouac scholar Paul Maher Jr. Award-winning designer Igor Satanovsky created the cover.  Igor also happens to be a poet in his own right and studied poetry under [...]

Writing Wednesday: You Are King

  I have a lot of friends who work in book production.  When the publishing industry began to change and ebooks grew in popularity, putting some people out of jobs, they looked at me, the editor, and said, you’re safe.  You’re on the content side.  Publishers will always need editors, writers, and people working with [...]

The Story of Turning My Thesis In

You already saw the picture from my reading, but here’s the story of completing my theses.  Oh and what an adventure it was. One of my best friends was getting married on the Sunday before my thesis was due (why don’t people plan their lives around my writing schedule?!) so I had to put the [...]

Memorial Day: Kerouac in the Merchant Marines

Picture via Across an Underwood / Sketches on Kerouac Jack Kerouac was in the Merchant Marines during World War II. You can read about his time on the S.S. Dorchester, which ultimately was torpedoed, here. Kerouac made it out alive, but two of his Greek American friends from Lowell did not: Johnny Koumentzelis and Sebastian [...]

Not Hunting the Grizzly

On this day in 1975 the Grizzly bear was classified as a “threatened” species.  Even though President Theodore Roosevelt wrote Hunting the Grisly, he actually worked with John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, to protect America’s wildlife and landscape.  I address this in my introduction to the reissue of this classic book, which [...]

Accidental Speed Dating

Being a writer means spending a lot of time by yourself in front of a computer screen that just blinks back at you, waiting for you to make the first move.  Even when you’re a gainfully employed freelancer you rarely go into an office and meet your editor.  Interaction comes via emails, sometimes snail mail [...]

Chloris and the Greek Myth of the Rose

  The Greek myth of the rose is one of my favorites. Chloris, the goddess of the flowers, was in the forest one day when she tripped over a beautiful nymph lying lifeless.  Chloris was so overcome by the nymph’s fate that she reached out to the other gods to transform her into a flower. [...]