Chuck Klosterman has been here before. Not here literally, in Looney Tunes Records on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, where he killed time one recent afternoon between readings at Boston University and the Brattle Theatre. But he’s been here fi guratively, in the netherworld between staged events and actual experiences that journalism often straddles. Journalists and […]

“They’re talking in Japanese — that won’t work,” Barbara Wallraff said as she sidled up to a conversation taking place in Harvard Square on a sunny afternoon. The contributing editor and columnist for The Atlantic Monthly was trying to overhear bits of people’s back and forths, a habit she picked up to enhance her writing. […]

Lisa Crystal Carver has been a lot of things in her 36 years. She’s been a performance artist who antagonized her audiences and urinated in litter boxes onstage. She’s been a prostitute and a sex writer. She was an early originator of fanzine culture whose handmade magazine, Rollerderby, was chockablock with smart, sassy commentary on […]

Even before writing her first collection of darkly funny personal essays, ”Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants,” Jill Soloway had professional and artistic cred to spare. She was a writer and co-executive producer of the critically worshipped television show ”Six Feet Under,” and she founded the popular bi-weekly storytelling night, ”Sit ‘n Spin,” in her hometown […]