Fresno Taught Me to Write and Dream

In California's Central Valley, Heat, Exhaust, and Tule Fog Breed Killer Poems

Every once in a while, I remember that I was born on the other side of the world, and it makes sense that I love looking up at the stars. Fresno, California, my home for the last 20 years, is 9,000 miles from my birthplace of Daejeon, South Korea.

As an infant, I was found on the steps of a church. I was adopted, at 10 months old, by an American couple from San Francisco. When I was 26, I moved to Fresno to accept a tenure-track teaching position at …

By Lee Herrick | August 28, 2015

The Daunting Task of Reimagining ‘Anne of Green Gables’

As a Kid, Writer Andi Teran Fell in Love With Anne Shirley, so She Created a Similar Young Hero for Contemporary California

By Andi Teran | August 10, 2015

“Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.” Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

There were many moments throughout …

The Serious Business of Pulp Fiction

How Paperbacks Helped Forge Our Modern Ideas about Sex, Race, and War

by Paula Rabinowitz | April 7, 2015

Cheap paperback books are like sex: They claim attention, elicit memories good and bad, and get talked about endlessly. The mid-20th century was the era of pulp, which landed in …

My Country ’Tis a Book

Are We Still Searching for ‘The Great American Novel’?

by Lawrence Buell | February 3, 2015

Most credentialed literary critics disdain it as a grandiose hyperbole, and creative writers tend to speak of it in jest. But for almost 150 years, all of us—writers, readers, cultural …

Novelist Neal Stephenson

Wanna Be a Writer? Write 10,000 Pages, Then Throw Them Away

November 30, 2014

Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic “The Baroque Cycle” and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. Before discussing the relationship between science …

Catching a Train—and Fragments of Poetry—at Union Station

An Experiment to Pour Art Into L.A.’s Great Monument to Transitory People

by Chiwan Choi | October 1, 2014

Zócalo’s editors are throwing it back to some of our favorite pieces from the archive. This week: Writer Chiwan Choi reflects on #90for90, an …

literature

Fresno Taught Me to Write and Dream

In California's Central Valley, Heat, Exhaust, and Tule Fog Breed Killer Poems

The Daunting Task of Reimagining ‘Anne of Green Gables’

As a Kid, Writer Andi Teran Fell in Love With Anne Shirley, so She Created a Similar Young Hero for Contemporary California

The Serious Business of Pulp Fiction

How Paperbacks Helped Forge Our Modern Ideas about Sex, Race, and War

My Country ’Tis a Book

Are We Still Searching for ‘The Great American Novel’?

Novelist Neal Stephenson

Wanna Be a Writer? Write 10,000 Pages, Then Throw Them Away

Catching a Train—and Fragments of Poetry—at Union Station

An Experiment to Pour Art Into L.A.’s Great Monument to Transitory People

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The Magic of Speaking Poetry Out Loud

A National Contest Makes Verse More Social Than Solitary

Is Fresno California’s Taco Capital?

In Search of a Galvanizing Narrative, a Growing City Looks to Its Taquerías

Can Books Build Community?

Putting California’s Inland Empire on the Literary Map

Why Fresno Is on the Leading Edge of a ‘Wave’ of Political Change

A Progressive, Technocratic, and Majority-Latino City Council Points to a Larger Transformation in California

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