High heels, high expectations

A friend told me the other day that because her boyfriend is her same height, she doesn’t like to wear high heels so that she doesn’t look taller than he. I think this is a fairly common sentiment, but it got me thinking. If we’re restricting what we wear because of a man, what other [...]

A Dysfunctional Family Holiday

Fringe is once again teaming up with Redivider, Black Ocean, and Quick Fiction to host the Dirty Water Reading Series’ 2nd Annual Dysfunctional Family Holiday. There will be holiday-themed mad-libs and short readings by Fringe contributor Steve Himmer, as well as Sommer Browning, Stace Budzko, and Tao Lin. Oh, and there will also be free [...]

Breaking the Sequence

Has this ever happened to you: You come across a passage or line in a book and think it brilliant, and are thrilled that you’re the first one to discover it, only to find that people have been talking and writing about that exact thing for years? Much later than I should have, I read [...]

Congratulations Doris Lessing!

Today Doris Lessing is the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. She’s the 11th woman to win this distinguished honor. Her extensive writing has confronted social issues such as feminism, race, and communism, yet her sophisticated literary style keeps her from being confined to a political writer. I’ve only read one of her [...]

Keggers and CliffsNotes: Passed the test!

Keggers and CliffsNotes was the best college party, ever. Maybe it was the keg, maybe it was the pizza, maybe it was the 4 awesome readers that made the night, well, magical. After some boozing and schmoozing to the college-band soundtrack in the background, a crowd of about 50 people settled down to hear Amy [...]

Keggers and CliffsNotes: A (Mercifully Short) Reading

THIS Sunday, September 23, (after the Race for the Cure) the Dirty Water Reading Series will present Keggers and CliffsNotes, a (free!) reading at Grub Street in Boston. Readers on tap: Amy L. Clark (published in Fringe’s feminism issue), Beth Woodcome, Brian Foley, and Janaka Stucky. What better way to kick off the school year [...]

The Kite Runner: A Review by Janell Sims

This is the ninth of a many-part series written by the staff and editors of Fringe Magazine, who will be reviewing books from the Pool as part of the 25 Books Project. I know what you’re thinking: Please oh please, not another schmaltzy review of this over-popular book. I know, I hate popular books. Instant [...]

Confessions of a Girly Girl

I didn’t own a pair of jeans until fifth grade. But I had dresses aplenty. Dresses, lacy socks, even dolls with matching outfits. Maybe because when shopping with my Virginia-born grandmother, harsh denim fabric never seemed to catch her stylistic eye. That, and when placed next to my frilly wardrobe, jeans just seemed vulgar. All [...]

Collage of Power or Porn?

The Museum of Contemporary Art in LA is featuring an exhibit entitled “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution.” The cover of the catalogue for the exhibition, co-published by MIT Press, features a collage by the feminist artist Martha Rosler. The cover is a collage of photos of nude women taken from various advertisements in men’s [...]