The 2015 MLS Cup game is this Sunday, the final match-up of a long, grueling U.S. soccer season. To celebrate, an essay by Story co-founding editor Vito Grippi about the narratives soccer offered him as an American child of an Italian immigrant family. WHAT WE CALL SOCCER IS USUALLY CALLED FOOTBALL. That’s what the English call it. Though …
Today we are cheating a bit with a book technically published nine months ago, but it’s Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon’s memoir Girl in a Band, and the real publication date for any rock-n-roll memoir is the paperback one, because you can’t roll a hardcover and shove it in your back pocket. Dey Street Books releases the paperback edition of Girl …
On Thursday, September 17, 2015, I met novelist Justina Ireland at lunch with the Story staff and several York College of Pennsylvania students. She was visiting as part of the college’s cultural series of lectures and readings, and she had agreed to do an interview with me after lunch for the Story website. When we arrived at the …
Every Tuesday, Story Online will recommend a new book being published. To kick off New Day Tuesday, check out one of our favorite Story editors, Ryan Britt, and his new book, Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths. This collection of essays is personal, insightful, hysterical. Geek-royalty and Welcome to Night Vale narrator Cecil Baldwin calls the book “personally revealing, …
In the movie, when Dracula moves from Transylvania to London, the first thing he does is crash the opera, and starts making the moves on the ladies. In particular he’s interested in Miss Mina (Helen Chandler), though Mina’s friend Miss Lucy (Frances Dade) has the hots for Dracula just a little bit more. Soon after …
Robert Mende pulled the plug on his marriage not with a violent jerk, but in spurts; it may not have added up to much of anything at first, Mende was nothing if not scrupulous; he kept at it, and after a good year and a half of solid effort his wife was thinking of divorce. …
“Play ball,” the umpire yelled, raising both hands. Crouching low behind the catcher, he pointed his finger out toward the center of the diamond, out toward the girl standing high on the hill. She nodded. Then pressed her fingers against the gleaming sphere, drew her eyes into slits, and looked for the sign. Around her, …
One afternoon, as Denise watered plants and I changed a light bulb, we heard the squeal of brakes and a terrible howl. We ran outside. An old VW van with a bright mural painted on its side was parked in the road. A wild-haired, older woman stood next to the van. Our dog lay …
The border hasn’t always existed. It was put there for complex geo-historic and political reasons so long ago that no-one knows much about them now. I live right next to the border, which is a line drawn in the dirt. That is also true of my home, which is a series of straight lines, bisecting …
Born in 1890, Tod Browning, one of the first horror genre directors, began his career during the silent film era. “He was the John Carpenter of his day,” claims Dr. William Dodson, Professor of Rhetoric, Literature, and Media Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Browning directed such films as the original …