Her name was Virginia Clemm, and she was his cousin. When Poe, age 27, married her, she was just 13. How and why they wed is the strangest of Poe’s grim tales. Continue reading
Author Archives: Katherine Luck
What is literary fiction?
Literary fiction breaks many of the rules of conventional novel writing. But are there some rules that can’t be broken? Continue reading
How to go viral
A guide to what makes hoaxes, memes and fake news spread Continue reading
Is radio dying?
Listeners are abandoning radio and advertisers are steadily dropping out. But they’re not the biggest threats. It’s something a lot simpler. Continue reading
Does genre really matter?
When it comes to genre fiction, novel length is not an artistic choice. Why is this the case? Who decides how short is too short for a novel? Continue reading
Are memoirs fiction or nonfiction?
If memory is unreliable, is there really any difference between a novel and a memoir? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Continue reading
Edgar Allan Poe tries Japanese candy
You will say that I am mad—for who but a madman could devise so remarkable a species of vengeance, marked by such intricate dissimulation, such exquisite cunning? Continue reading
Can you solve these 19th-century math problems?
This is one of the easiest: “On Monday, I sold 3/7 of my pears; on Tuesday, I sold 16 more than 1/2 of the remainder, and had 20 pears left. How many had I at first?” Continue reading
