Jennifer Howard

Writer, editor, journalist.

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Old Year, Old Biz, New Year, New Media

January 7, 2010

Happy New Year, everyone. Like a lot of people I know, I was not sorry to see the back of 2009, a year in which some very unpleasant things–personal, financial, global–occurred. There were good moments, too, which I try to remember to be grateful for–catastrophes narrowly avoided, for instance, and some fiction published. Even though… Continue reading »

Switch-Tasking Toward the Future

March 2, 2009

At the 2009 WebWise Conference on Museums and Libraries in the Digital Age, held here in D.C. last week, I collected a new term: switch-tasking. Definition? Instead of doing a number of things all at once–multitasking–you rotate among tasks. I haven’t figured out yet whether the difference is more semantic than substantive, but it’s worth… Continue reading »

Meme This

February 12, 2009

Dear Facebook: I am not my music, even though I sometimes wish I were. I do not want to share 25 random facts about myself with even one other person, much less 139 of them. I do not want you to help me create my Witness Protection Program name. I do not want to know… Continue reading »

Argh. Really.

September 19, 2008

It not just Emoticon Day, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. Please don’t.

Happy Emoticon Day :)?

September 19, 2008

Sept. 19, 1982: The electronic smiley face makes its debut. Interpersonal communication will never be the same again.

The “ATM of Books”

September 18, 2008

The Espresso Book Machine, coming soon to a library near you? In 5-7 minutes, the Espresso will deliver a printed-and-bound copy of any book you like (as long as it’s out of copyright and available in digital form through a collection the machine can access). The Espresso’s manufacturer, On Demand Books*, has big dreams for… Continue reading »

American Culture: Domesticity, Religion, and…Golf?

September 11, 2008

Yup, if Salman Rushdie, editor of this year’s Best American Short Stories, is to be believed: Q.What do the themes in this year’s best stories show about American culture today? A. There’s clearly an interest in domestic subjects, religious subjects, and, most mysteriously, in the game of golf. But there were enough wilder, more imaginative… Continue reading »

Twittering the Classics

August 27, 2008

I don’t know about you, but I have been underwhelmed by Twitter as a vehicle for political coverage. Just because everybody’s doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Does “twittering” sound like serious reportage to you? Twittered literature, however–now there’s an idea with legs. Call it twitlit. Maud Newton notes that, so far, we… Continue reading »

Conventional Wisdom

August 21, 2008

That’s conventional as in conventions, “stultifying media spectacles where no one expects anything to happen.” So says Chris Lehmann in a Q&A posted today by Harper’s. Chris is a senior editor at CQ, the nonfiction editor of Booforum, and a very sharp guy. (He’s also a good friend of mine from my Book World days,… Continue reading »

What Else Does She Do?

August 11, 2008

From the cover of the September issue of Lucky: “Milla Jovovich gets sexier and sexier.” Hey, it’s a living.

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Announcements

We live in the age of peak newsletters. So many good ones to choose from–but if indie publishing intrigues you, check out my dear friend Anne Trubek‘s weekly newsletter “Notes From a Small Press.” Anne’s the founder of Belt Publishing, and in “Notes” she shares what really goes into making and marketing books. It’s fascinating and well worth your time.

Latest Work

  • “What We Lose by Reading 100,000 Words a Day”

  • “Nobody’s Girl”

  • “Copy Machines in Libraries Are Going the Way of the Dodo–Slowly”

  • “Content Providers?”

  • “What Next-Gen Digital Humanities Looks Like”

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About Jen

Jen Howard sitting in front of a brick wall. She is smiling.

Writer, journalist, editor, gadabout. Book- and nature lover. Washingtonian. LLC. Read more »

Latest Posts

  • Would You Let Marie Kondo Tidy Your Books?
  • Frankenreads on Camera
  • Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” Comes Alive at the Library of Congress
  • Deep Reading Is Good for You! (But It’s Harder Than It Used to Be)
  • Lullaby in Libraryland

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These works by Jennifer Howard are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

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