Elena Passarello

Teach Me Tonight

In 1941, the Embassy Music Corporation printed “Tips on Popular Singing by Frank Sinatra,” a short text—little more than a pamphlet, really—by the singer and his coach, John Quinlan. “Everyone can sing a little,” the manual insists, assuring its reader that “the popular vocalist who has had voice training, beyond a few simple exercises, is the exception rather than the rule.”   [keep reading...]

Aaron Gilbreath

“Just Move Around” (Eddie)

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE AUDIO ESSAY:  The city of Portland, where I live, is the urban center of a county with more than fifteen thousand homeless people. That figure includes not only people who sleep on the streets and in shelters, but also people who sleep on friends' couches, in cars, and in transitional housing. [...] In 2009, Oregon ranked first in the nation for homelessness per capita. I wanted to investigate this, to see who these people are, and how they get by. So I spent the summer of 2011 talking to some of the homeless population here in town. That's how I met Eddie.   [listen to the essay...]

Alexandra Kimball

Here: On Twitter,
Writing, & Buzz

Back in 2010, I had a tedious but pleasant at-home gig as a creator of corporate blog copy. Let’s say it was for a company that sold chocolate syrup. For this purpose, I had an account on Twitter, in whose placid blue screen I spent several hours a day, cutting-and-pasting bit.ly links into the platform’s compose box and then releasing them into the thicket.   [keep reading...]

Alison Stine

West Coast Loneliness

Snowfall, this is my goodbye to you. Already there is a chip on one of the black-striped bowls I bought at the discount store in the Mission on Friday. I find it comforting. Already it’s worn, already familiar. Already, I broke it. The hallway of my new apartment smells of England.   [keep reading...]

Laura E. Davis

Submission Bombing (interview)

Here at Better, we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how culture, and especially literature, will change as a result of social networking and other online technologies. So when we heard about a group of writers calling themselves “Submission Bombers,” who swarm literary journals, flash-mob style, in the spirit of social change, we wanted to get the inside story from the group’s founder, Laura E. Davis.   [keep reading...]