Betsy Robinson's Blog - Posts Tagged "magazine"

I’m a voracious reader as well as a writer, and therefore a lot of my journalism these days focuses on books.

I knew nothing about Oh Reader magazine except that they might be open to articles I’m interested in writing. And I was thrilled when editor Gemma Peckham accepted a piece about finding hilarious books by female writers. She has published it, under the title “Laughing with the Ladies,” in the December 2022 (issue 010) Oh Reader and, oh boy, am I surprised and grateful for the discovery of this magazine.

I just finished reading it cover to cover, and this is a reader’s heaven.

Of course, I like my own piece, detailing the difficulty of finding pee-in-your-pants funny books by women, why that has been a problem, and a list with short descriptions of the 13 books that I’ve discovered since I began my quest eight years ago.

But there’s more.

My favorite stories: how being raised Hindu affected the writer’s (Thulasi Seshan) reverence for physical books; the story of a neighbor’s book collection and how reading it after her demise affected the author (Rebecca Duras); a fittingly short essay by a writer (Steven Allison) who couldn’t read due to his ADHD about the unlikely way he learned he can read whole books; and a deeply moving contemplation by a bookseller (Laura Bridgewater) about what she learned was the true gift of the bookseller-customer interaction.

Not only are the articles wonderful, but the art, layout, and high-quality paper make this a magazine to save.

The December issue will be on magazine stands on December 8, 2022, and you can learn more at Oh Reader.com.

I'm thrilled that my essay "Walking Alone--Dangerous or Heroic?" is published in the spring issue of Canadian magazine Prairie Fire.

There were two inspirations:

In her wonderful memoir Becoming Michelle Obama wrote that if you didn’t see your own story in the cultural narrative, tell it. I’ve never seen my story in the cultural narrative. This is it.

The structure of this essay is stolen from the brilliant Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir I Am, I Am, I Am . I took her bits and reduced them further to essay size.

Thank you, Prairie Fire!!! Thank you, friends, for reading this if you feel so inspired. It's not online, but you can buy it here: https://www.prairiefire.ca/current-is...