Thoughts on George MacDonald and Fantasy’s First Novel — Genre can be a rigid, exclusionary concept, a law chiseled upon sacred tablets. And yet, fantasy often pulls other creative works into its oozing, pseudopod grasp — absorbing everything in a slow, but deliberate crawl across literature. If the law of genre declares anything with a touch of the supernatural…

by April Hopkins — I read an Instagram post of someone who not-so-subtly declared an end in sight for the conceptual and abstract expressionist art movements — that have dominated our society for the past 100 years — and proclaimed a return to more classical styles. Another Renaissance, if you will. …

8 Rules for Kids with Cellphones — Once my daughter Kennedy was old enough to stay home alone, the question of getting her a cellphone also came up. Suddenly, I was thrown into unfamiliar territory. Parenting is a challenge when the problem takes on weighty, almost absurd levels of symbolic meaning. …

The Most Important Thing a DM Can Do At the Beginning of Any Game — A few weeks ago, I attended Origins Game Fair with three of my closest friends. (Full disclosure: All of us are fairly experienced DMs. Thus, we have a lot of opinions on Dungeons & Dragons. I consider myself a writer — first and foremost — and view any DMing as…

Tammi True was crass and irreverent, and I will miss her terribly. — Sometimes, you work on a story, and it gets much larger than you ever anticipated. In 2010, I pitched the idea for an article on the re-emerging burlesque scene in Dallas. My editor Tim liked it, and thus I began work on my first feature for D Magazine. I initially…

Talking to Students About Abortion, Weed, and Dress Code — As a former school teacher, I’ve thought a lot about how we think through the tough issues. For several years, I assigned a “social issues” essay to my students. And I always began this assignment the same way, by saying, “Students, you should know that good and intelligent people will…