Showing results by narrator "Dani Martineck" in All Categories

Najwa Zebian, EdD, has been grappling with the concept of letting go for years, both in her own journey and in her interactions with community members, students, and friends. More and more, Najwa has observed that while our problems are personal, the themes surrounding them are universal. She concluded that letting go is a topic that deserves specific attention and consideration. Wanting a tool that is practical for as many people as possible, Najwa used her considerable platform to solicit questions from longtime followers.

It’s 1993, and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shape-shifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women’s Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco - a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him. The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement.

Among a crop of fresh filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola revolutionizing Hollywood in the ’70s, Brian De Palma—a director from Philadelphia with a few social satires under his belt—charted a cinematic path unlike any of his peers. At times he was unfairly dismissed as a Hitchcock copycat; other times he was misunderstood for his peculiar mix of sexuality, humor, music, and violence. But, over the course of ten years, he created a new cinematic language.

Whilst working on a spreadsheet for a New York-based PR firm, Gerald has his consciousness uploaded into his company's Slack channel. He posts for help, but his colleagues assume it's an elaborate joke to exploit the new working-from-home policy and, now that Gerald's productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from...wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists co-worker Pradeep to care for his body and Slackbot, the service's AI assistant, to help him navigate his new digital reality.

Halfway through sixth grade, Noah’s best friend and the only other trans boy in his school, Lewis, passed away in a car accident. Lewis was adventurous and curious, always bringing a new paranormal story to share with Noah. Together they daydreamed about cryptids and shared discovering their genders and names. After his death, lonely and yearning for someone who could understand him like Lewis once did, Noah starts writing letters to Mothman.

When their ex-hero dad is summoned back to the royal capital of Helston to train a hopeless crown prince, Callie lunges at the opportunity to finally prove themself worthy to the kingdom’s "great and powerful." Except the intolerant great and powerful look at nonbinary Callie and only see girl. But Callie has always known exactly what they want to be, and they’re not about to let anything stand in their way.

All they need to do is get out. Alissa, Sky, Miles and Mint are ready for a night of fun at the Escape Room. It's simple. Choose their game. Get locked in a room. Find the clues. Solve the puzzles. And escape the room in 60 minutes. But what happens if the Game Master has no intention of letting them go?

It’s 2003, and artist Dawn Levit is stuck. A bookbinder who works in conservation at the Met, she spends her free time scouting the city’s street art, hoping something might spark inspiration. Instead, everything looks like a dead end. And art isn’t the only thing that feels wrong: wherever she turns, her gender identity clashes with the rest of her life. Her relationship, once anchored by shared queerness, is falling apart as her boyfriend Lukas increasingly seems to be attracted to Dawn only when she’s at her most masculine.

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings.

Thanks to Callie and their friends, Helston seems to be changing for the better: Boys are allowed to explore their magic, and girls are permitted to train as warriors. Callie is an official Helston page, Willow in on track to become king, and Elowen and Edwyn are finally safe and free of their father. Everything is…perfect. Except it isn’t. Not in Helston, where every step forward is accompanied by a storm of opposition. Even Queen Ewella and Sir Nick are struggling against the wave of fear and anti-magical sentiment growing daily, while the encroaching threat from across the bridge looms.

John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent thinkers on technology and design, and in How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today but the unimaginable machines of the future. Machines are already more powerful than we can comprehend and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire. And when a program's size, speed and endlessness combine with its ability to learn and transform itself, the outcome can be unpredictable and dangerous.

An eight-year-old trauma victim is enlisted as an underground courier, rushing frozen organs through the alleys of Eastern Europe. A young janitor transforms discarded objects into a fantastical, sprawling miniature city until a shocking discovery forces him to rethink his creation. A brazen child tells off a pack of schoolyard tormentors with the spirited invention of an 11th commandment. A wounded man drives eastward, through tears and grief, toward an unexpected transcendence.

The first time I heard about Planet Choom, we'd been on Mars for almost a year. But life on the Mars station was grim, and since Earth was no longer an option (we may have blown it up), it was time to find a new home. That's how we ended up on Choom with the Zhuri. They're very smart. They also look like giant mosquitos. But that's not why it's so hard to live here. The Zhuri don't like us. And if humankind is going to survive, it's up to my family to change their minds. No pressure.

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.

The six teenagers who make up the Lit Lair have it made. A beachfront mansion, millions of followers, stunning good looks, and sponsorship deals worth more money than they ever dreamed. They live together, making videos about their perfect lives. Except it’s not so perfect after one of them turns up dead in the infinity pool. When the group TikTok account starts posting cryptic messages, the police stop looking outside the house for suspects — and start looking straight at them. Everyone in the Lit Lair had reasons why their lives would have been easier without Sydney Reynolds.

Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club series featured a complex cast of characters and touched on an impressive range of issues that were underrepresented at the time: divorce, adoption, childhood illness, class division, and racism, to name a few. In We Are the Baby-Sitters Club, writers from the original BSC generation will reflect on the enduring legacy of Ann M. Martin’s beloved series, 35 years later - celebrating the BSC’s profound cultural influence.

It all starts with a note folded into the shape of an origami octopus: "Hi, Me. Yes, you. You're me, and I'm you." If you believe this and the other origami notes that follow - which middle-schooler Meade Macon absolutely, positively does not - the concept of parallel dimensions is true, and there is a convention full of alternate versions of Meade waiting for his RSVP. It's got to be a joke.

Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the other denizens of Mount Olympus feel almost as present and larger than life today as they did when they were worshipped as gods. Humanity has been telling and retelling stories about the characters from Greek and Roman myth for centuries—heck, the Romans liked the Hellenic originals so much, they remade them faster than Marvel remakes Spider-Man movies. And from Virgil's Aeneid to Xena: Warrior Princess to Percy Jackson to The Song of Achilles, the obsession has never waned.

Nobody could get Frederick Law Olmsted to sit still. He was filled with energy, adventure, and dreams of changing the world. As a boy, he found refuge in the peace and calm of nature, and later as an adult, he dreamed of designing and creating access to parks for a growing and changing America. When New York City held a contest for the best park design for what would become Central Park, Olmsted won and became the father of landscape architecture. He went on to design parks across America, including Yosemite National Park and even the grounds for the United States Capitol.