fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
“Fences” is, pretty transparently, about the misery of being a celebrity. “You’re always on display / for everyone to watch and learn from,” sings Hayley Williams in the first verse. It’s not lost on Williams that this is a privileged position and also that, because of that privilege, because fame is considered desirable, there will always [...]
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite newsletter writers suggested that they weren't necessarily burnt out, they just didn't want to do much of anything for a while. I guess you could argue that's exactly what burn out feels like but it doesn't really matter what you call it, because the important thing is [...]
One of my favorite places on earth is completely and utterly ordinary and that's okay. Powell's City of Books, located in the heart of Portland, is subdivided into rooms identified by color. In the Blue Room you'll find literature and poetry. Philosophy and self-help are in the Purple Room. Each room, like a dog on [...]
Hank Green's A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is a complex story. An alien hive intelligence, the perils of social media celebrity and a talking monkey are among the natural headline fodder of the plot's explosive adventure. Beyond that, it's legitimately astounding that Green managed to release a book in mid-2020 that is so keenly attuned to [...]
Congress is in the early phases of negotiating another massive stimulus package and it's tempting to append "before it's too late" to the end of that statement but, in truth, it's probably already too late for this next stimulus package to have anything near optimal impact for the people it's meant to serve. Of course, [...]
This is arguably the most unimportant impact of COVID-19 and yet it's one that seems undeniable and has been on my mind a lot lately: Since the pandemic first shut down my life in mid-March it feels as if time has stopped. It hasn't, of course, as evidenced by the fact that it's now mid-July [...]
A writer's creative space is sacred, or at least that's the impression that everyone on the internet wants you to have. And, in fairness, they're not necessarily wrong. Every writer I know, along with the graphic designers, musicians and creators of whatever else, has a favorite place to settle in and get to the messy [...]
Like a lot of you, I often turn to music for escape when I'm stressed. I'm less interested in the science of why we do this than I am in the choices we make of what to listen to. Broadly speaking, classical music should offer the most stress release but—even though there are a handful [...]
We are living in a fraught, historic time and right now it feels nearly impossible to think about anything save the unrest that grips the nation and the onslaught of dangers that beset black Americans and other systemically disenfranchised minorities. As a member of the privileged white middle class, I make a less than compelling [...]
"Liz Lemon isn't funny." That's all it said. One text, lobbed like a grenade into a group text without any pretext. It was incendiary. It started a war. We're still sorting through the carnage. To be clear about which side I stand on, let me say this very clearly: Liz Lemon is very, very funny. [...]
Songs & Stories 