Isabel Kaplan

The nominees for Literary Review's annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award have been announced. The Bad Sex in Fiction award was established in 1993 by the magazine's then editor, Auberon Waugh, in order to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual...

Writing is like sex: The best way to learn is by doing. Studying other people's techniques can be helpful -- but only to a certain extent. At a certain point, you have to grab your preferred medium and dive in. Your first experience will probably not be very satisfying. You...

The distinguished literary scholar Marjorie Perloff is upset with me. She has written and published multiple responses to my recent article, "In Someone Else's Words," which I published here on The Huffington Post as well as in The Crimson, in which I criticized Professor Kenneth Goldsmith's...

The number of writers who repurpose other writers' words and call it legitimate original artwork (not to mention the number of advocates for such a practice) is -- very disconcertingly -- on the rise.

Kenneth Goldsmith, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, is a vocal advocate of the practice....

I can't remember a time when I didn't know about rape. And I can't remember how I learned. I just know it was there, always there. Being raped altered and shaped my mother's identity, and I always knew that.

When I was nine or 10, maybe 11, and I...

Slaughterhouse-Five has been removed from the English curriculum in a Missouri school district because of its inappropriateness. Score one for censorship. Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson's award-winning young adult novel about a teenager struggling with the aftermath of rape, has also come under attack for what one man calls the "soft...

"Hi, my name is [Insert Name Here], and I went to Harvard. Want to have drinks/dinner/sex?"

If you're a guy who wants to use your Harvard degree as a way to pick up women or a woman who wants to meet rich and successful Harvard grads, there's a brand new...

As this year's high school seniors choose colleges, parents might be surprised to learn that Harvard, Yale, and other elite schools have more permissive attitudes toward underage drinking than many others--and alcohol-related hospitalization rates are rising. Is it smart policy or reckless negligence?

Smart policy, I think.

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This post is dedicated to Mr. Hershey Kaplan, born April 4, 1997.

When I was six years old, what I wanted more than anything else in the world was a dog.

My parents were hesitant. My parents had never had dogs, had never raised a puppy. They told me to...

Norma and Alejandro immigrated to the United States from El Salvador over ten years ago. They have three children, all of whom are younger than twelve. Norma works at night as a custodian for Harvard University, and Alejandro has devoted a lot of his time, recently, to dealing with newly...

Note to my generation: this exhibitionism has gone too far. On Facebook, we share personal details with hundreds (or thousands) of "friends." By simply logging on to my Facebook home page, I can see where you went last night, what group of friends you were with, what shirt you...

On Wednesday, the North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill saying that fertilized eggs have all of the rights of a human being. The bill defines any organism containing a single human cell as a human being.

In other words, abortion could be charged as murder....

Now that President Obama has asked Mark Dybul, who served as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator since 2006, to step down, who will succeed him? I hope he taps Harvard Medical School professor Jim Yong Kim.

It's a crucial position, overseeing all international AIDS programming and funding, including the President's...

The SAT is a learnable, beatable test. You can learn exactly what skills will be tested, and you can learn what tricks the College Board might sneak into the multiple choice questions. Now, with the inclusion of Score Choice, the SAT is going to be even more beatable.

Beginning with...

Last Tuesday, history was made. My college campus exploded; hundreds of students converged in Harvard Yard and began taking literal victory laps around the Yard. Groups shouted, "Yes we can! Yes we did!" Among the undergraduate community, there was great excitement and a real sense of optimism for the future....

I am a student at a very liberal university in a very liberal city. I have seen all of two McCain-Palin shirts today. Every other person I pass has an Obama sticker on. We are all nervous. Today, history will be made. The question is what that history...

It's not that often that I feel absolutely infuriated during English class.

But this semester, at my all-girls school, I'm taking an elective entitled "Gender and Sexuality." Last night, our homework was to read about date rape from the point of view of Paglia.

My mother teaches...

Bordertown premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival last week. A film that is trying to raise awareness and raise activism, but all it raised in Berlin was boos.

How dare they boo?

It doesn't matter if you don't like J Lo.

According to Amnesty International, more than 400...

I wouldn't describe myself as fearless. Hardly. I'm scared of a lot of things -- rejection, loneliness, failure. I think it's more of the fact that I've learned to put my fears aside; I've learned to walk in long strides, even when I'm not sure if the ground might give...

Well, actually, I'm just sixteen -- my birthday was on Saturday -- but that's beside the point. The point is that when you're my age, it can be, at times, hard to feel as though you can really make a difference.

I can't even vote, so how do I expect...