Dima Novak’s PUSHING PAWNS is a bold, smart YA tale about chess, friendship, and Soviet nostalgia. — The diverse, ragtag group of urban kids comprising a chess club at public school Q722 in New York are three decades too young to have any memories of the Cold War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. However, for the narrator of PUSHING PAWNS — gifted 14-year-old Moses Middleton…

How a 2000 movie about four diverse families celebrating Thanksgiving is at once dated, nostalgic… and timely — I remember seeing What’s Cooking in the cinema on its release in December, 2000. It is now nostalgic. Shot in the waning days of the Clinton Administration, the movie takes place in an America before September 11; before George W. Bush, the War in Afghanistan, Donald Trump or January 6.

And, it isn’t going to change in my lifetime — This past Friday, the Jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial reached a reasonable verdict based on Wisconsin law. Wisconsin — like many other states — has permissive laws governing the carry and use of firearms after years of gun lobby influence. …

Those saying it’s an innocent tale of childhood friendship are doing a disservice to gay boys, who need a story about what it’s like to come out, and how fun life can be when you do. — If spoilers are important to you, read this after you’ve seen the film. I’m not the most woke person on the planet. I’m intersectional only at my leisure, and not one to examine every jot and tittle through a prism of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Keep editing, or shelve it? Whether a story is a success or forgotten, writers should enjoy storytelling. — In 2018, I wrote two short YA pulp stories for a now-defunct publisher. I also wrote about some lessons I learned writing pulp. Pulp is quick-written ephemera. It’s designed to sell well at the front-end, then never again. It’s entertaining, then forgotten. I succeeded by these metrics. Three years later…

If the raid on the capitol building were simply about “violence,” perhaps we could compare it to the events of Jan. 6. — On January 6, a group of angry Donald Trump supporters who had rallied in Washington, D.C. stormed the United States Capitol to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden as President of the United States. This happened against a complex backdrop. First, President Trump, who lost a free and fair election…

I’m not going to do anything about William Faulkner — I once wrote a piece on Medium about how Chinua Achebe took offense to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (How Conrad and Achebe Battled over Africa). Achebe felt Conrad’s story frames colonialism as a white man’s struggle and reduces Africans to props. …

WNYC’s On The Media sat down with the “Contrapoints” host to discuss cancel culture — and being cancelled. — I discovered Natalie Wynn through WNYC’s On the Media podcast in an episode titled “Making Sense of Cancel Culture.” Wynn, who is a trans woman, hosts the website/YouTube vlog Contrapoints. …

Jill Criswell’s article about finding inspiration in global travel misfires when aimed at the YA crowd — Jill Criswell is a writer from Northern Florida. She took an MFA in creative writing from UCF, and, like me, she travels the globe. We haven’t met, but I think we’d be friends. Like her, I think world travel creates a perspective shift worthy of discussion. …