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Jan 14, 2025 | 
latimes.com | Emily Van Duyne
In “The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom,” Nancy Reddy juxtaposes her own raw story of early motherhood with a tour of 20th century parenting science’s greatest hits — or worst failures, depending how you look at it. “Before I had a baby, I was good at things,” Reddy writes in her introduction, beguilingly called “Love Is a Wondrous State,” a line she nabs from psychologist Harry Harlow.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
electricliterature.com | Emily Van Duyne |Doireann Ní Ghríofa |Jo Lou |Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Whether we like it or not, literary history tends to follow a known path. In high school, we read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and we are told this is the definitive book about The Dust Bowl. In college, we are introduced to T.S. Eliot’s long poem “The Waste Land” and told that this work is an example of high modernism.
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Jul 11, 2024 | 
lithub.com | Emily Van Duyne
Emily Van Duyne on the Ways Misogyny Masks Itself and Slithers On, Then and Now In a recent piece for Bookforum, the critic Moira Donegan called Christine Blasey Ford one of our culture’s “disposable heroes.” Heroic for going public about her alleged assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; disposable because we know what happened, in the end. During the now-famous hearings on Capitol Hill in the fall of 2018, Blasey Ford was nervous, but clear, “superlatively credible,” Donegan...
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Jul 9, 2024 | 
bookshop.org | W.w. Norton |Emily Van Duyne
(Author) FORMAT Buy new or used from an indie through our partner Biblio: Price Condition Seller Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world Description Sylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination--the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry, a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl.
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Jul 3, 2024 | 
jessicadefino.substack.com | Emily Van Duyne
“The body may not be an apology, but it is the problem I face,” writes in an essay on her life with trichotillomania — hair-pulling disorder, a condition the two of us share. I’m so grateful to Emily for sharing this guest essay, below, with The Review of Beauty. Emily is also the author of the book Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, out on July 9.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
lovingsylviaplath.substack.com | Emily Van Duyne
[Image description: A photo of Judith Jones and Sara B. Franklin standing at a kitchen counter, prepping a meal. The photo is of their backs; only Jones’s sweater and hair are visible; Franklin’s face is in profile, her glasses perched upon the top of her head.]“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle. Love is a war. Love is growing up.” -James BaldwinLoving Sylvia Plath is a reader-supported publication.
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Apr 21, 2024 | 
lovingsylviaplath.substack.com | Emily Van Duyne
Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of talking with my friend Sara B. Franklin, whose book The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture In Americais available for pre-order, and debuts on May 28. Judith Jones was Sylvia Plath’s editor at Knopf during Plath’s lifetime, but I knew of Jones long before I learned of this connection, having watched her portrayed as Julia Child’s editor in the movie Julie & Julia (2009).
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Feb 11, 2024 | 
lovingsylviaplath.substack.com | Emily Van Duyne
[Image description: a black-and-white photo of Sylvia Plath with her infant son, Nicholas, in 1962.]On October 29, 1962, visiting London, Sylvia Plath attended a PEN party to celebrate a new anthology published by the landmark group dedicated to the defense of “freedom of expression worldwide since 1921.” The anthology, which Ted Hughes had helped to edit, had two poems by Plath, “You’re” and “Candles,” both of which dealt with pregnancy and motherhood.
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Dec 3, 2023 | 
lovingsylviaplath.substack.com | Emily Van Duyne
[Image description: Me (Emily Van Duyne) looking Zoom-y, but with a strong eyebrow game, talking with the MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi for his #VelshiBannedBookClub, about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.]Dear Readers, I’m very happy to share that yesterday morning, I got to be a guest on Ali Velshi’s “Banned Book Club” to discuss Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar. I am always delighted to, as my good friend Ash says, “rep our girl,” but this was surely the widest audience I have ever repped to.
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Jun 14, 2023 | 
theoffingmag.com | Michael Montlack |Emily Van Duyne |Hugh Behm-Steinberg |Oskar David
My sister used me as the disciplinarian. But mainly for educational purposes. So when she told my niece, G’head—tell him! I assumed an F was involved. Kim shifted on the sofa, her witness stand. Come on, my sister said. Just tell him!What already? I wanted this over with. Michele inflated as she drew the air in. Your niece here, she said, is a fag hag!What? I turned to Kim, who shrugged. You have a gay friend? I asked. At ten? No! my sister blurted. She has THREE!Three? I said. Who? Are they out at school?
