Pens and Poison

Pens and Poison

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The Case for Writing Love Poems
How I Learned to Stop Pleasing Academia and Write the Poems That Actually Matter
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Liza Libes
6
The Great Works of Literature Would Not Be Published Today
Arbitrary Submission Rules Are Killing Literature
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Liza Libes
60
Masha Gessen’s Gross Betrayal of the Russian-Jewish Legacy
The Russian-Jewish Convictions That Survived the USSR—and Why Some Are Forgetting Them
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Liza Libes
17
Tertius Lydgate and the Birth of the Modern Doctor
How George Eliot’s Middlemarch Bridged Victorian Medicine and Scientific Modernity
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Liza Libes
5
Illicit Kingdom
Chicago | January 2024
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Liza Libes
4

July 2025

Literature & Zionism | Ted Goldstein
The Pens and Poison Podcast EP 10
 • 
Liza Libes
 and 
Ted Goldstein
13
48:51
No, Cartman, Wokeness Isn’t Dead
Rainbow capitalism may have vanished, but the ideology is stronger than ever.
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Liza Libes
22
Vintage Lovers
Stuyvesant Square | August 2022
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Liza Libes
5
Announcing The Poetry Vault
Liza Libes Poems Make Their Substack Debut
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Liza Libes
2
Coaching the College Essay in the Age of AI
Why Students No Longer Know Themselves—and How to Save Them
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Liza Libes
8
The Small Talk Epidemic
Why We’re All So Lonely and How Aristotle Can Help
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Liza Libes
12
Worried About AI? Study the Humanities
As AI Eats the Tech Industry, It’s Time to Rethink the Value of a Humanities Degree
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Liza Libes
6
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