Jody Amable

In this time of toy-giving, I'm reflecting on the impact one doll made on me and, I'm willing to bet, a small subset of other girls, too.

Forget a cute story of wizard wonderment — the real moral of Harry Potter is that life is an endless parade of pain and turmoil where you have to watch everyone you’ve ever loved die.

So far, Deathly Hallows is, to me, about the divide between the living, the dead, and the living who have seen death. Harry and I are part of an exclusive club: Those under 30 who have experienced death. And when I say “experienced,” I don’t mean “witnessed.” I mean really, really felt it, all the way through.

If I let everyone off the hook for extenuating circumstances like, “He’s over 50, so he probably just doesn’t know any better,” no one’s ever going to stop calling me “sweetie.”

I was waiting to finally not like a Harry Potter book, and folks, I found it. Half-Blood Prince was boring.

FINALLY someone acknowledges professional boundaries at Hogwarts.

In the aftermath of my mom passing, I've learned to reconcile our rocky relationship with the knowledge that she loved me.

The neighbors turned their lights off. My dog fell sound asleep. I kept reading. And at 1:03 am, I finished. All was well.

Creator of grungy, gritty rock and roll with a poet’s heart, her critically-lauded record, Beyond the Bloodhounds, tells tales of a tumultuous childhood and split geographical identity.

Jon Stewart, step aside. Your heir apparent has arrived.