Pens and Poison is the literary project of author Liza Libes. Enter a world of literary analyses, cultural critiques, and other hot takes.
| Platform |  | Pricing | Freemium | Publishes | Twice weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 193 | Founded | 2 years ago | Last Issue | 9 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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The Biggest Misreading of Crime and Punishment
One of the most common interpretations of Crime and Punishment is also one of its greatest misreadings.
When I studied Crime and Punishment at Columbia, we focused on Raskolnikov’s abject poverty, his relationship to masculinity, and the a...
Why Contemporary Publishing Is Broken
In 2014, I jumped into the “querying trenches” for the first time.
Ambitious, brazen, and seventeen, I had written a novel with a lofty Shakespearean title that explored the moral decay of contemporary adolescence. I wasn’t expecting to ma...
The Russian Word English Can't Translate
It’s no secret that Russian is notoriously difficult to translate into English—and the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky are no exception. Since the first English translation of Crime and Punishment appeared in 1886, over twenty different interpr...
How I Became a Russian Jew
This essay originally appeared in Kveller in 2024 and is republished here with permission.
I was 21 years old when I learned my father had gone to jail for being a Jew.
I had grown up without a rooted sense of Jewishness. I attended Jewis...
How English Departments Destroyed Literature
I got an A+ for calling Shakespeare transgender. But the problem is so much worse in English departments across the Western world.
The best paper I ever wrote for my English classes at Columbia University was a final paper arguing that Sha...
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Founder of Pens and Poison, a unique multi-platform project that promotes the love of literature and the humanistic tradition.
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