HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Charles John Huffam Dickens! 200 years and still going strong!

What IS it about Dickens?

The 2012 celebration of his bi-centenary will take in the full range of his cultural influence worldwide. This PopMatters call for features and reviews seeks to reflect the visual and dramatic global cultures of Dickens, many examples of which can be found listed here, from New York to Manila. See, for example, Dickens 2012.04 and the British Council.org.

Along with the international recognition of his significance as a writer taking place throughout the year, there are the responses that readers and viewers have to the novels (first-time readings and re-readings), and the many and various adaptations. Recently the BBC has introduced new versions of Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood; the former, starring Gillian Anderson as the youngest ever actor in the role of Miss Havisham.

Informed, intelligent, engaged and engaging writing (ergo, engaged thinking) is the hallmark of PopMatters. Our writers are cultural generalists with a broad range of interests; thus, our scope is broadly cast on all things pop culture. However, you don’t always have to write a 2,500-word essay to capture (and keep) our interest. PopMatters blogs, which are very popular with our hip, informed readership, run the gamut of topics in culture, and we’re looking for people who love to blog about all the world’s cultural offerings. Indeed, we encourage you to explore all mediums, and express most thoughtfully on all that you see, hear, read, play, watch, do.

Note: We are unable to pay you for reviews at this time, but you will not go entirely without compensation; your ‘pay’ is the opportunity to address our readership, currently more than 1 million unique readers per month and counting. Some of our writers have been called upon for their opinion by such media outlets as the BBC, NPR, MSNBC, Radio Australia, and VH1. Also, USA Today.com, Alternet.org, Google News, and Movies.com regularly pick up links to PopMatters articles and post quotes from PopMatters writers.

Pitch Deadline: None. This is a standing call.
Contact: Karen Zarker
Email: zarker at popmatters dot com

There was a time, late 19th/early 20th century or thereabouts, when people, many of them the fashionable French, ventured out to public establishments to imbibe in, among other things, an herbal/licorice/mind-bending brew distilled from the essence of the inelegantly named ‘wormwood’ plant, which resulted in the poetically named ‘absinthe’ cocktail. Deep within absinthe’s perplexing, complex concoction the “Green Fairy” resided. She is named the “Green Fairy” due to her glowing color and the muse-like inspirations she cast upon some suggestible minds (many quite famous minds, at that). Indeed, absinthe was a fashionable drink among the Parisian artist and intellectual class. You know; those Bohemian-types that so raise the ire of the uptight, fuddy duddy social conservatives and prohibitionists that exist in all societies throughout the world, throughout all time.