Welcome to the Ember Chasm blog section. Craft articles, book reviews, and so much more. New content always incoming: We’re striking matches and building new fires as you read.
Craft Articles
Saint Maud: A Cinematic Marriage of Heaven and Hell
With a blend of eroticism and repulsion, possession and madness, Rose Glass sires one of the richest films in recent horror history.
Promising Young Woman: The Most Holistic Film of the #MeToo Era
If you ever wanted every single question answered about the nature of American culture when it comes to the issue of sexual assault, then look no further than Emerald Fennell’s astonishing debut.
Review of Past Lives, Future Bodies by Kristin Chang
Past Lives, Future Bodies by Kristin Chang is a sharp and vivid poetry collection. Each poem feels like a fish flowing through brightly colored, corral-speckled waters, sunken ships of family relationships rusting in the distant sandy depths, plunges into the inky waters of family relationships, sexuality, and race lurking just around dark seaweed bends. TheseContinue Reading
Review of Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Like its title implies, Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney encourages us all to speak, share our feelings, and delve into our experiences. Set in Dublin, this novel follows twenty-one year old Frances and her former girlfriend/current best friend/artistic partner, Bobbi, when they form a bond with an older couple—Nick and Melissa—at a literary event.Continue Reading
3 Ways The Last of Us Can Improve Your Writing
Videogames tell stories—unique stories, ones that are far more interactive than films or books, and that have the potential to take you through some truly heart-wrenching narrative experiences. The Last of Us is one such experience. Actually, it’s arguably the experience. With over 200 award wins and nominations, The Last of Us holds the podiumContinue Reading
Review of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
In The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake a young girl named Rose is suddenly able to taste her mother’s feelings in the lemon cake she makes after school—and then she tastes her brother’s feelings (or the empty void thereof) in his sandwich, then the feelings of everyone else who makes any of the food sheContinue Reading
7 Books To Read to Support Black Lives Matter
With the murder of George Floyd by police, protests have sparked all over the world. All fifty states, more than seven hundred U.S cities, and at least seventeen countries have united in protest, calling an end to systematic racism and police brutality. Black Lives Matter now marks a civil rights movement—one of the largest inContinue Reading
Citizen by Claudia Rankine – A Must Read
“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” One of many powerful quotes in Citizen, Claudia Rankine’s heart-wrenching, genre-bending, rage-inspiring 2014 collection. With the current abhorrent human rights violations inflicted upon George Floyd acting as the most recent entry in a blood-soaked history of racism in this country, this book, now more thanContinue Reading
Review of Knots by Gunnhild Øyehaug
Øyehaug’s collection of short stories—the shortest being one page and the longest twenty two—is an odd and anxious experience. Everything is quite normal, but slightly off: the spaghetti is slimy and cold, the wallpaper looks red and pimpled, the snow outside blows in, twirling like a dizzying hula hoop. She gives you only the detailsContinue Reading
Review of The World Isn’t the Size of Our Neighborhood Anymore by Austin Davis
Austin Davis’s poetry collection, The World Isn’t the Size of Our Neighborhood Anymore, is an intricate and honest love letter to growing older. It pulls us deep into an abyss of memories that are warm and cold, caring and painful, benign and violent, but above all necessary. Weaving together both moments of nostalgia and yearning,Continue Reading
Marlon James: “Reclaiming the Fantasy Novel”
Image credit to Megan Potter, ASU Now Marlon James has made waves in the Fantasy world for a while now. He won the Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings in 2015, and if you’ve read his work, you know why. Jame’s prose, especially in his most recent publication, Black Leopard, RedContinue Reading
Five Ways to Create a Complex Character
Being alive is weird. It comes with emotions, experiences, societal placements, and upbringings. We each have different cultures, hobbies, belief systems, identities, and ideologies that are a part of who we are. Instead of simply existing as gelatinous balls of flesh, humans contain multitudes. Characters in narrative should be the same way. One of theContinue Reading
The Correspondence of Existentialism and Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s To the Light House
In her book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir describes a woman’srelationship to creativity: “when she does not find love, she may find poetry…the young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make herContinue Reading
Review of No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
This book was a mix that felt both familiar and absolutely incredibly wrong. It was a bit like drinking a colorful, fruity-looking smoothie only to find out it was entirely composed of foods—tomatoes, salmon, maybe some pickle juice—that definitely shouldn’t be in a smoothie. It was equally interesting and disgusting. There were atrociously dislikable characters,Continue Reading
Review of Story of Your Life, and Others by Ted Chiang
I’d heard of Ted Chiang; in the city of science fiction, he is the architect always erecting the newest marvel in the art center every year. And yet, I always seemed to find an excuse not to go see it, whether it was the distance, or the price, or my lack of reading time, orContinue Reading
Eight Tips to Be a Better Writer
You’re here because you want to write. You want to write good things. Things that resonate. Things that matter. But to do that, you have to write them. And writing’s hard—don’t worry, we feel the same way. It’s why we’ve compiled eight tips to help broaden your knowledge of the craft, and make writing thatContinue Reading