ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MERGE . Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I think it’s time that I can safely declare my love of holiday tunes. Last winter, I was belting, humming, and dancing along to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Leon Redbone and Zooey Deschanel well into February. This winter, theContinue reading

Emma Straub is a native New Yorker. Her debut collection of short stories, Other People We Married, will be published by FiveChapters Books in February. She works at BookCourt, one of Brooklyn’s finest independent bookstores, and will smile at you so hard that you have to look away. She also likes to bake cookies, tweet,Continue reading

Algonquin author Julia Alvarez, who grew up hearing stories about the Mirabal sisters, and whose family fled the Dominican Republic only months before the tragic deaths, immortalized the sisters’ story in her bestselling novel In the Time of the Butterflies, which was first published in 1994 and has been translated into 13 languages, as wellContinue reading

In her “Personal Health” column in Tuesday’s New York Times, Jane Brody wrote, “I urge you to read the best-selling book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, who coined the phrase ‘nature-deficit disorder.’” We agree! The article, about the negative effects of our decreasing physical activity and growing disconnect with the natural environment,Continue reading

Michele Filgate is the Events Coordinator at RiverRun Books in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She recently made New Hampshire Magazine‘s “It List” for 2010. Michele is a writer and a book critic, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She’s written for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Bookslut, The Quarterly Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, CBSNews.com, TheContinue reading