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Blaine Harden is a reporter with a particular interest in North Korea and its politics. In 2008 he met a young man named Sin In Geun. The young man had defected from North Korea, no mean feat considering it is one of the most repressive and brutal...

Evicted tells the story of eight poorer families who are struggling to pay rent during the 2008 financial crisis (which over 3 million people lose their homes and many lose their retirement savings). It deals with how people survive in the face of...

In his short novella Signs Preceding the End of the World (originally published in Spanish but later published in English), which The Guardian said "From its opening pages... this marvelously rich, slim novel is working on many levels," author...

Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat is best known as a fiction novelist and short story writer, but her memoir, written in 2007, was inspired by the head-on collision of both tragedy and joy in her life, occurring on the same day. Danticat...

Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility, subtitled 'Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism', was met with very polarizing reactions when it was published in 2018. In her book, DiAngelo, an academic, unveils the reasons why white...

Published in 2008, The Sky Inside is a science fiction novel by American author Clare B. Dunkle. The book is the first in the two part The Sky Inside series, and was received with moderate reviews upon release. The book follows the story of main...

First written in 1948, "Seventeen Syllables" was published in an anthology of Hisaye Yamamoto's most famous works in 1988. As a collection, it includes stories that span almost forty years of writing and as well as her seminal work, includes other...

Spirited Away is a Japanese fantasy animation film released in 2001. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazki, it was originally a sort of side project that Miyazki worked on whilst his personal projects were busy being rejected by all of the studios...

The Last King of Scotland, directed by Kevin Macdonald, written by Peter Morgan (The Crown, Frost/Nixon) and Jeremy Brock based on the novel by Giles Foden was produced by Lisa Bryer, Andrea Calderwoods and Charles steel. The 2006 film tells the...

Ghostwritten is a 1999 drama novel written by David Mitchell. It was published by Holder and Stoughton and won several prizes. The book is David’s debut novel, and many of his next books were written in the same fashion and universe as ...

Growing up in the 1800s in a wealthy, upper class English family, Helen Beatrix Potter led a cocooned and isolated childhood in a large, sprawling home; she was a lonely child who was also intrigued by the world around her, particularly in the...

"Inland Passage" and Other Stories is a 1985 collection of short fiction by Canadian author Jane Rule. Famous for her exploration of LGBT (and specifically Lesbian) themes in her writings, Rule continues to explore same-sex relationships between...

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl is a novel that explores the life of Elizabeth as she grows from a young girl to an adult. As a child, she is teased because she is fat, and is scarred forever because of it. Her childhood friend, named Mel, seems...

One never knows what one might find by having a good rummage at an estate sale; at one such sale, one attendee discovered an antique manuscript that revealed itself to be The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, the first known memoir penned...

Due to unprecedented and tight budget constraints, Dallas Buyers' Club was shot in just twenty-five days, with no rehearsals or read-throughs, no customary lighting set-ups, hand-held cameras for scenes of less than fifteen minutes in length and...

The Day the Earth Stood Still is arguably director Robert Wise's first masterpiece in a career that had quite a few (The Sound of Music and West Side Story, to name a few). It tells the story of an alien named Klaatu and his eight-foot robot named...

I, Robot was directed by Alex Proyas with a screenplay by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman suggested by the book by Isaac Asimov. It was produced by Michael Lee Baron, John Davis, Topher Dow, Wyck Godfrey and Laurence Mark. The film was made for a...

It has been said that the nineteenth century was the century when sexuality, and sexual identity, was first invented, which is also when this collection of short stories, all detailing the sexual predilections of a selection of "queer" characters,...

Perhaps what is most interesting about Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude is how long it took to get an audience. Since its release, the film has gained the reputation as a "cult classic" -- or a book or movie that is popular amongst a certain...

Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) write a vast number of novels and short stories, often under pen names such as William Irish. He hit his stride in the 1940’s with a series of novels and stories that redefined the concept of the American crime story....

There is a saying that goes, "Wherever you go, there you are" - meaning that people do not change just because their geographical location has. The essay demonstrates the truth in this saying only too well and shows that escaping from gangs,...

Nominated for two Academy Awards, Into the Wild is a film based on the true story of student athlete Christopher McCandless, who gives up all his possessions, donates his life savings of almost twenty five thousand dollars to charity, and...

Some writers purposely look for anonymity. J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon are the poster boys for this type of avoidance of the limelight and the trappings of fame. Other writers toil in obscurity until they are “discovered” late in their...

Written in 1942 by Italian author Dino Buzzati, The Seven Messengers is a collection of short stories. In the book, there are nineteen short stories, beginning with the first, "The Seven Messengers. Other stories include "The Assault on the Great...