Author and activist Schuyler Bailar has answers to your questions about gender. With anti-trans bills proposed by legislators across the United States, discussions of gender identity are at the forefront of politics today. Bailar’s debut nonfiction, “He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters,” breaks down society’s views on the topic and its importance to the present and the future.
Every year, Mount Holyoke College hosts an event to celebrate student poetry. “It's so exciting to get to share my work, and to meet all these great people from different universities and hear everyone's work,” Mount Holyoke contestant Aderet Fishbane ’25, said, speaking about the College’s 101st Annual Glascock Poetry Competition.
Glascock is traditionally composed of three events. The first event, on the afternoon of Friday the 29th, was a conversation with the judges of the contest: Jennifer Tamayo, Samuel Ace and Margaret Rhee, all poets and authors themselves. Attendees gathered in the Stimson Room on the sixth floor of the Williston Memorial Library to listen to the poets discuss topics ranging from the role of transformation in the judges’ work, their work with other media in connection to their poetry and to understand how they seek out community.
For 15 days, the Mount Holyoke College community lost online access to Odyssey Bookshop, the bookstore closest to its campus and one of the few businesses located in the Village Commons. Mount Holyoke News’ staff has followed this situation closely, even as both the problem and its eventual resolution appeared to be hidden from view.
The problem was first addressed in early February attempts to reach the Odyssey Bookshop’s website online would result in an error message displaying that connecting to the site had taken too long and had now timed out. This could be caused by any number of issues, such as poor connection to the internet — the site crashing — or the Odyssey site being down for maintenance by the store. Eventually, Odyssey Bookshop addressed the connectivity issue.
How does a small town end up with a body in a well? That is the question answered in the novel “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” published on Aug. 8, 2023. In the book, author James McBride examines how a working-class community of Jewish and African American people are affected by antisemitism and racism from the white, Christian community around them in similar and different ways. McBride also explores how these groups might be able to bridge the divides between them.
The spy thriller novel “Argylle,” written under the pseudonym Elly Conway and released last month by Penguin Random House, has been a large talking point across both Bookstagram and general fan internet spaces. While the real writers of “Argylle” might not be Taylor Swift, to the chagrin of many fans, their names do begin with T. Sorry Swifties!
Photo courtesy of Glenn Francis via Wikimedia Commons.
Fans wonder if Swift is making a writing debut.
“Argylle” by Elly Conway is turning out to be the spy thriller of the month — and is also rumored to have been written by Taylor Swift.
While the claim is, as of now, unsubstantiated, there is definitely something strange afoot with the novel. Production for the film adaptation of the novel has been in the works since 2021 under director Matthew Vaughn, perhaps best known for directing, writing and producing the “Kingsman” franchise of which “Argylle” is now a part. “Argylle” is set to be released by Penguin Random House in January 2024, with a film adaptation starring Henry Cavill and Bryce Dallas Howard releasing in theaters and on Apple TV in February.
While publishers purchasing the rights to a novel before the book is released is not unheard of, it is unprecedented for a book and its movie adaptation to be released within a month of each other. The unusual circumstances around the book’s release and the mysterious identity of its author have sent some Taylor Swift fans, or “Swifties,” sniffing to see if the thriller was actually penned by the international pop star.
Some traits that “Argylle” has are uncharacteristic of a debut novel, fueling the fire of some Taylor Swift fans’ theory. For example, every synopsis available is only a few sentences long and gives little information about the actual plot. The book is said to follow Special Agent Argylle, who is sent out by the CIA’s spymaster to stop a Russian magnate from bringing the world to the brink of war. There are no further details about the novel itself.
Another somewhat suspicious thing is the lack of Advanced Reader Copies available. ARCs are a valuable resource when it comes to marketing a book before publication, and many debut authors utilize them to promote their books. They allow early readers and reviewers to get a sense of the novel and to share what they did and didn’t enjoy with other potential readers.
There do not appear to be any ARC copies of “Argylle” out in the world, nor was the novel ever listed on some of the most popular digital ARC sites, such as Netgalley. On Goodreads, there is one ongoing giveaway for a print copy and six ratings from small and/or blank accounts, but no actual reviews.
With Conway being a debut author, audiences are quite suspicious. Little is known about Conway herself, and while using a pseudonym is not uncommon for authors, her mysterious identity is what lays the groundwork for speculation.
This isn’t the first rumor that has claimed the singer is connected to writing a book. Earlier this year, there was speculation that a then-untitled Flatiron nonfiction release was going to be Taylor Swift’s memoir — again based on limited facts and speculation, the primary one being the release date, June 13. The $45 book was actually about BTS, much to the disappointment of Swift fans who had placed preorders.
A cursory glance at Conway’s Instagram page shows comment after comment from Swift fans speculating about the writer’s true identity. Conway’s feed shows content about the movie and limited information about the book, which, for a debut author, is quite rare. The majority of debut authors have multiple posts discussing their upcoming books and encouraging preorders — but Conway does not.
The extent of Conway’s talking about the book is the sentence in her bio: “Argylle, debut novel coming soon.” This sentence is followed by a link showing the casting of Cavill as Argylle. There is also Conway’s first-ever post, from December 2022, showing the book cover alongside the caption “#Argylle, coming summer 2023.” This release date has evidently been pushed, but that is not unusual.
It seems that the theory in favor of Taylor’s connection to “Argylle” is about the movie rather than anything specific to the book. Fans just assume that Swift and “Argyle” are connected because of some associations between the two. On Sept. 28, 2023, Conway made a post showing the trailer for the movie and thanking Vaughn for bringing the story to life. It was not long until Swifties came with the rumors. User gabriela.ajmaza said, “All Too Well, writer, red hair. Familiar?” referencing Howard’s character in the clip, who is a writer with red hair, similar to Sadie Sink, who plays one of the main characters in Swift’s “All Too Well” short film.
This theory is only scratching the surface. On Oct. 25, right before the release of “1989: Taylor’s Version,” Instagram user alex_the_owl_2.5 made another inference: “Here's another connection I've found. In this picture there are two people wearing blue and black respectively. ... On the other hand, Taylor Swift posted ‘aquamarine/Moonlit swimming pool/ what if/all I need is you’ on her [Instagram] story ... These lines are also written in blue and black.” But none of this points in the direction of the artist writing the novel. While Conway’s character could be inspired by Taylor, that doesn’t mean Taylor contributed anything to the project.
Needless to say, fans would be ecstatic if the rumor turned out to be true. Swift’s impact, even at a small school like Mount Holyoke College, is quite apparent around campus, from seeing people dressed up as her for Halloween to screenings of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” film at Tower Theaters.
Currently, there is not much to know about this story until the book and movie are released. Until then, the Swifties have as much stake in the game as anyone. “Argylle: A Novel” by Elly Conway is out from Penguin Random House on Jan. 9, 2024.
Spotify recently announced a new benefit for Premium users that would give them free access to audiobooks for a total of 15 hours each month. The new feature, announced on Oct. 3, will make more than 150,000 audiobooks on the platform available for Premium users – though this does not include Spotify’s entire audiobook catalog.
A queer romance set in Harlem’s art scene is the subject of “Lush Lives,” the first fiction book published by author J. Vanessa Lyon under her own name. On Tuesday, Sept. 12, the Odyssey Bookshop invited Lyon to speak about the book, marking Lyon’s first bookstore reading. Prior to “Lush Lives,” Lyon wrote “The Groves,” an Audible original, and “Meet Me in Madrid” under the pseudonym of Verity Lowell. Lyon is an art history professor at Bennington College, a liberal arts college in Vermont, and her academic background shines through in “Lush Lives.” The book’s protagonist, Glory, explores the rich and storied history of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when Black creativity in the arts flourished, and how it connects to her own experiences in the modern day.
Book banning is no new concept; for several centuries it has remained a galvanizing issue within U.S. politics. According to the Harvard Library, the first recorded instance of book banning in the U.S. occurred in Quincy, Massachusetts, back in 1637. Recently, The New York Times has reported a drastic increase in book-banning efforts in schools within the United States.
With the popularity of chatbots like ChatGPT on the rise, the functions of artificial intelligence have garnered greater interest around the world. In the publishing industry, AI has been used in two distinct ways for content creation. On an individual basis, AI has been used to generate stories to send to magazines that are accepting submissions or to upload to self-publishing platforms. On a larger scale, companies have begun to use AI to create content for their websites.
By Emma Platt ’26
Staff Writer
The Glascock Poetry Contest took place last week during the first weekend of National Poetry Month and featured work by students from across New England. The competition was judged by poets Eileen Myles, Evie Shockley and Hoa Nguyen. These established poets read selections of their work on the Saturday of the competition, but could only showcase a small portion of their work. For those wishing to explore more of their poetry, here are three more works by these authors.
“Prophesy” by Eileen Myles
In this poem, Myles uses both humor and evocative and odd imagery to transport the reader into a strange world that Myles writes from. Down to their writing utensil being “the devil’s cock” which is like “a fat burnt crayon.” Myles uses the Devil as a clear reference to the personification of pure evil. The poem is in free verse and lacks punctuation except for one period in the middle.
Myles is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of UMass Boston. They have published twenty volumes of both poetry and prose fiction as well as art journalism and libretto work. They have received four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and several other accolades.
“her tin skin” by Evie Shockley
In this poem, Shockley writes about insecurity and wishing to be like another person on the surface. She wants the subject’s “tin skin,” which is repeated over and over in the poem. She describes the subject’s “militant barbie breast” and “mountainous” curves as things that she desires. Shockley writes about her own brownness as well: “i / want my brownness / to cover all but the silver / edges of my tin skin.”
A graduate of Northwestern University, the University of Michigan and Duke University, Shockley is from Nashville, Tennessee. She has had fellowships with Cave Canem, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. She has also been honored with the Holmes National Poetry Prize.
“Unused Baby” by Hoa Nguyen
In this poem, Nguyen writes with imagery from nature, folklore and religion to create a confusing but fascinating piece. She uses images of everything from blood to frogs to form strong images in the reader’s mind, drawing them in. This is similar to her general style of poetry, which poet Ocean Vuong once described as, “a poetics insistent on fragmentation and rupture as a mode of thinking and being in the world — one where, paradoxically, the very notion of fragmentation is, in itself, a whole. Her poems remind us that meaning, as we understand it, does not have to adhere to standard conventions of syntax.”
Nguyen was born in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, and grew up in the United States before settling in Canada where she now lives. She has written several books throughout her career and has been nominated for the Griffin Prize, Kingsley Tufts Award, National Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award. She has taught creative writing at the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as at community colleges
