Wish there were a word to describe that anxiety you get over a stack of unread publications? Lizzie Skurnick coined one: pagita. Or for being mocked in social media? Lizzie has a word for that, too: Twitticule.
Since 2012, Lizzie Skurnick has been writing the hilarious "That Should Be a Word" feature for the New York Times Magazine's "One-Page Magazine," offering readers indispensable new terms to describe and navigate the perils of modern life-words like brattle v., n. To discuss one's children, often at length. (Anne hid in the basement to avoid the cocktail brattle.); or fidgital adj. Excessively checking one's devices. (Victoria grew tired of watching her fidgital fiance glance at his iPhone every 5 seconds.) That Should Be A Word comprises 244 of these immediately indispensable terms, organized by theme and arranged in ingenious diagrams suggesting their derivation and interrelation-for instance, the way skinjecture (speculation about the plastic surgeries someone has had) relates to iconoplast (one who chooses to age naturally) and donion (too many procedures). With witty illustrations throughout.
Author Biography
Lizzie Skurnick is the author of Shelf Discovery (as well as ten teen books in the Sweet Valley High, Love Stories, and Alias series), and the founder of Lizzie Skurnick Books (an imprint of Ig Publishing), which rediscovers classic Young Adult novels. In addition to her weekly "That Should Be a Word" column in the New York Times Magazine, she writes the "Fine Lines" column on Jezebel.com. Her first blog, Theoldhag.com, was one of the first to go viral. She contributes regularly to NPR, is a frequent speaker at conferences such as BEA and SXSW, and is a former vice president of the National Book Critics Circle. She has written for publications ranging from Time to the Daily Beast to Bookforum, and recently launched Open Ticket, a collection of great essays and fiction by today's writers, on Medium.com, the new online magazine created by one of Twitter's founders. She lives in Jersey City with her son, Javier.
