Elizabeth Minkel

Dec 5, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Devon Field |Elizabeth Minkel |Matthew Wynn Sivils |Andrew Coletti

Finding the perfect gift is a labor of love. In these stories, gift givers go above and beyond. From Asian elephants probably better left at home, to a pygmy hippopotamus whose relatives live on today around the United States. We’ve got long-forgotten sheep shearing cakes, oddly specific fanfiction, and the earliest known board game printed in the United States. Not sure what to get a loved one this year? Find inspiration in these five stories of bizarre gift giving.

Sep 23, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Elizabeth Minkel

Writer’s houses have long attracted passionate fans. While sites like Ernest Hemingway’s cat-filled Key West home and Edith Wharton’s Berkshires estate, The Mount, are often billed as places of historical and architectural interest, literary house tours are also sites of fan tourism, places that let readers feel emotionally—and physically—connected to an author they love, in the spaces where they worked as well as lived.

Aug 8, 2024 | atlasobscura.com | Elizabeth Minkel

When fans really love a character, they try to embody them from all angles: dressing up like them (cosplay) or traveling to the place they canonically live (fan tourism) or creating works of art about them (fanart, fanfiction, vids, playlists—only some of a huge range of things under the “fanworks” umbrella). But to really understand a character from the inside, there’s nothing more intimate than the food they eat. Food is threaded throughout all sorts of fannish practices and experiences.

Jun 19, 2024 | es.wired.com | Elizabeth Minkel

Cuando se emitió un nuevo episodio de la serie Entrevista con el vampiro, de AMC, el domingo pasado, se encendió una mecha especial en las conversaciones online sobre ella. La quinta entrega de la segunda temporada, “Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape” (“No tengas miedo, pon la cinta”), era una película de terror para la pantalla chica impecablemente escrita y actuada, el tipo de espectáculo que ves con la boca abierta, antes de apuntar a tu televisor y decir: “¿Tú también estás viendo esto?”.

Jun 18, 2024 | technewstube.com | Elizabeth Minkel

As social media filled with people asking why no one was watching the best show on TV, fans desperate for Interview With the Vampire's renewal turned the blame on AMC's own marketing.