Waywords Studio
Wanderings on Literature and Language
Waywords
our studio
“Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.”
Angela Carter
Waywords produces a web of programs and media designed to improve our thinking in democratic action, in critical literacy, in global understanding. We provoke, inspire, and wrestle with the ambiguities and richness of human thinking, from times modern to ancient.
While offering serious educational support for those who want it, Waywords entertains and engages with surprising takes on a wide range of global topics, from Western social trends to modern mythological thinking.
Criticism & Reviews
The Waywords podcasts and blog explore the workings of global literatures, language, and mythology through a social-epistemic rhetoric. Book reviews explore a wide range of genre, era, and region.
Fiction & Verse
Original prose includes verse, short fiction, work from the ImageMaker cosmogony, the Sam & Nadi English learners series, published collections like Unwoven, and audio drama.
Teaching & Learning
Programs to support students in lifelong literacy training, Advanced Placement® Literature, IB® Theory of Knowledge, philosophy, composition and critical reading, and English language learning.
“The Jellyfish” by Samantha Leriche-Gionet (Boum)
3-Word Review: Experiential Demonstrative Memoir Frictional Posture: What does the graphic novel format accomplish that words absolutely could not?
“Enamels and Cameos” by Theophile Gautier
3-Word Review: Dreamlike Untranslatable Curiosities Frictional Posture: Find 2+ translations: Where might all fail to capture Gautier's aesthetic? Earlier Review: I read this volume inside the larger collected works of Gautier, a 1903 edition, Vol 24, by FC de...
“Men Without Women” by Haruki Murakami
3-Word Review: Quiet Self-Deluded Poignant Frictional Posture: Across the stories, to what degree are Murakami's narrators blame-worthy for their alienation?
“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones
3-Word Review: Culpable Generational Hemovorous Frictional Posture: Yes, horror, but what agreement might all three narrators have about accountability?
“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El-Akkad
3-Word Review: Personal Incisive Outraged Frictional Posture: Reflect on how Akkad's claims resonate in your own experience. What accounts for this?
Building Fantasies
How does the map overwrite the physical territory it claims to represent? Today we look at literary simulations, from the bedroom of Victor Hugo to the Orlando welter of parks and rides. Guided by the semiotics of Umberto Eco, the simulation theory of...
“Peter Grimes” by Benjamin Britten
3-Word Review: Grim Diversionary Elusive Frictional Posture: Consider how the opera re-orders your reader ethics/moral judgments. Why?
“The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley
3-Word Review: Hook-driven Romance-tropes Predictable Frictional Posture: Which arbitrary details compel the novel's romantic and thriller plotting?
Mapping Dreams
How do we navigate the space between the curated tourism experience and the raw concrete of the world beneath it? We investigate the "imaginative geographies" we project onto other lands, examining how Italo Calvino’s semiotic cities, Arthur Conan...
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