“This is something people need to hear,” my coach told me. “You need to give this speech.” I certainly agreed on principle, but at the time, I wasn’t sure I had the skill to do my topic justice. It was the early winter of my freshman year, and I had been spending the previous several months researching America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for a debate case. As I pored through statistics and government reports, I was struck...

Start early, particularly if you plan to complete...

I was lucky enough to get a space in Bowdoin's first World Science Fiction course. I'm not knocking Joyce or Austen or Dickens or any other members of the Western...