Author name: Booksquare

Mary Beth Lucas once said to us, “Bias is everywhere. Your job is to try to keep it out of your work as much as possible.” We were young, freshman year in high school, and quite sure we would write as neutrally as required. We were going to be Brenda Starr and journalists reported without bias. Ah, how we miss those naive days! To write without bias is to write without personality. Word choice and usage informs a story and it also reveals the bias of the writer (or, in the case of fiction, the character). We laugh at the

Words are dangerous, dangerous things. Access to words can lead to the one thing oppressors hate most: thinking. A thoughtful, questioning populace is the most dangerous threat a dictator can face. In times of fear, cutting off access to words becomes the weapon of choice. In Cuba, though largely underreported by the media, librarians are on the front lines of the thought wars. Jailed for promoting dangerousness (heck, jailed for attending conferences). Subjected to seizure of their entire book collections. Forced to live with the knowledge that books are being burned. These are the actions of a government living in

We admit it: we delighted in the mental image of the Paris literary scene being shaken to the core. Absent live video, we were left to make do with a monolithic scene of Jacques-Louis David clarity, one where all members of said literary scene were conveniently located in the same cafe. The flaw with this image came in our inability to replace glasses of wine with outrage. What has France in distress? Oh, just a little statement of the obvious: In its 2004 report, the SCPA, part of the justice ministry, said it was “difficult to distinguish between jury members,

If you’re looking for a reason not to write for the Village Voice, might we point you to the latest offer from management to staff? In addition to the traditional benefit cuts (which we’re sure somebody is going to fix — you want your crisis? Try health care, and not just for artists), there’s a cute little item that should raise hackles everywhere: …and insisted that terms for work on the Voice’s website be determined in one-on-one deals between individual writers and the corporation, not through the collective bargaining that is required in a union shop. In a way, accessing