Emdashes—Modern Times Between the Lines
The Basics:
About Emdashes | Email us
Ask the Librarians
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into
Sempé Fi: Cover Art
Some Highbrow Literary Profiles from People Magazine in the 1970s and 80s
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Christoper Isherwood, Don Bachardy, Francis Bacon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joan Didion, Jonathan Taylor, Louise Nevelson, Nadine Gordimer, Nikki Giovanni, People magazine, Philip Glass, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag
An Angry Black Poet of the 1960's, Nikki Giovanni Cools Down with Success By Patricia Burstein, July 12, 1976
Writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne Play It as It Lays in Malibu By John Riley, July 26, 1976
Author Susan Sontag Rallies from Dread Illness to Enjoy Her First Commercial Triumph By Barbara Rowes, March 20, 1978
A Friend Recalls Affectionately a Shy Nobel Prize Playwright Named Samuel Beckett By Mira Avrech, April 13, 1981
Nobel Prize Winner Isaac Bashevis Singer on Life, Sex and the Storyteller's Art By Allan Ripp, May 17, 1982
Nadine Gordimer: A Radical South African Novelist Writes Paeans to Revolutionaries and Awaits a Racial Apocalypse By Joshua Hammer, March 26, 1984
After 31 Years, Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood Are Still a Portrait of Devotion By Carol Wallace, May 21, 1984
Saul Bellow Returns to Canada, Searching for the Phantoms That Shaped His Life and Art By Joshua Hammer, June 25, 1984
Also, music and art:
Francis Bacon: a Great English Painter Brings His Horror Show to America By Lee Wohlfert, April 21, 1975
Painter Alice Neel Strips Her Subjects to the Bone—and Some Then Rage in Their Nakedness By Patricia Burstein, March 19, 1979
Philip Glass Composes a Sanskrit Opera About Gandhi, but Who Can Understand a Word of It? By Joseph Roddy, October 06, 1980
—Jonathan Taylor
About us
Hello! I’m Emily Gordon, an editor, critic, copywriter, and pre-web internet nut. Emdashes, born in 2004, spent many years as a New Yorker fan blog. The project garnered some nice compliments and press.
The blog’s now treading the territories of punctuation, publications, movies, design, and other things that stir me.
Over the years, I’ve worked with a brilliant brigade of culture writers, editors, and artists. You can read all about the people who've helped build Emdashes here at “Who We?” (That’s a New Yorker joke. Old habits die hard.)
I welcome submissions, questions, corrections, and ardent, obsessive contributors. I also host occasional book-related contests and giveaways. Questioners and publishers, just email me.
Looking for The New Yorker magazine or newyorker.com? Kudos on your classy taste. Here’s how to find and contact The New Yorker.
Tell me more
Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like the em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Unsigned posts are by me; other columnists and contributors include Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, plus various guest stars.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of Emdashes webcomic “The Wavy Rule”).
Jennifer Hadley designed the original Emdashes pencil logo, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Some writing by Emily Gordon
- Liveblogging: the 2013 Street Fight Summit, a conference on hyperlocal business
- Reviews: as a theater critic at Time Out Chicago
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- At the scene: a festive downpour at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade; celebrating the lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Profiles: rising designers under 30 (for Print)
{Some more clips to snack on, pending a redesign of this whole clips business}
Blogroll highlights
- The Beautiful Sentence and Obscure Controversies (Emily’s distractions)
- Box Office Boffo (Martin Schneider on movies)
- World of Pollux (artist Paul Morris)
- Jonathan Taylor (scholar and critic)
- Carolita Johnson (cartoonist and rabble-rouser)
- My 2004-era blogroll (still current-ish!)
- Follow Emily on Twitter
- Befriend Emdashes on Facebook
- Get Emdashes swag at the CafePress emporium
No fear
Everything you tell or send me is off the record unless I ask for your permission to use it.
Advertise with Emdashes
Emdashes used to have ads, and it might again. Email me if you want to talk turkey.