Jody Amable

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.

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.

There are a lot of things to hate about the Olympics.

FINALLY someone acknowledges professional boundaries at Hogwarts.

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.”

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.

Harnessing the courage within myself—courage I didn’t even know I had—to coolly, calmly call this guy out has made me a better human being.

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

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.

I'm 30 years old and stuck in San Jose, the hometown I always wanted to leave. What happened?