Julia Keller

He came from what he called "the dead center of Illinois" and ended up in the heart of 20th Century American literature, a quiet giant of an editor and novelist...

When George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate earlier this week, the Texas governor inadvertently gave Democrats the right to say this: So shut up about Hillary....

Audiences have been thrilling to "X-Men," the new hit film based on the Marvel comic series about mutants with special powers. For those who know the comic-book originals, however, the...

My favorite movie cigarette scene occurs in -- forgive me, I swear it's coincidence -- "Julia," the 1977 film starring Jane Fonda and Jason Robards as writers Lillian Hellman and...

My paperback copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is battered and fragile, having passed through the eager hands of at least a dozen family members and many friends before landing,...

The feeling starts in the pit of your stomach. It's a flutter, a sort of nervous shimmy. Your palms are sweaty and cold at the same time. You're lightheaded, as...

Like it or not, not all art wants to be liked. Sometimes the aim is different. The prize is not praise but agitation, discomfort, even outrage. Some art doesn't want...

To a certain kind of restless girl growing up in West Virginia -- this would be me -- the work of writer Jayne Anne Phillips was indispensable. It was like...

In a wired world, deciding which e-mail to open each morning has become a duel of wits. The battleground: a computer screen with the day's list of new e-mails. Their...

First of all, no Roman worth her or his tummy-obscuring toga would have said glad-i-a-tor. They pronounced it glad-i-aw-tor, according to George Houston, chairman of the classics department at the...