Contributing writer

Petra Laura Oreskovic

Latest Content


Arts Asks: Elif Batuman on Autobiographical Inspiration

Elif I. Batuman ’99, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is the author of the newly published novel “The Idiot.” The book chronicles the experiences of Selin Karadag, a Turkish American beginning her freshman year at Harvard in 1995. Batuman spoke with The Harvard Crimson about her writing process and sources of inspiration, both literary and autobiographical.


‘Song to Song’ Familiar and Overlong

Terrence Malick’s “Song to Song” opens with what seems like a trailer for the rest of the film, yet the two hours that follow introduce little more in narrative content or character development.


‘Girls’ Grows Up in Its Final Season

In the final season of Lena Dunham’s often controversial, often hilarious, TV series, the self-professed “voice of her generation,” Hannah Horvath, finds herself (for the first time in a long time) on what seems like an upward career trajectory that might finally lead her towards maturity.


'Little to Do with Anything' Provides Pointed Fun

​“We have statues to pee on,” says one of the characters, a Harvard student, while encouraging another to hurry up in “Little to Do with Anything.” Kirkland Drama Society’s newest production—its annual, very loose adaptation of a Shakespeare farce—is a version of “Much Ado About Nothing,” relocated to Cape Cod and set a week before graduation.


Nicolas Jaar’s ‘Sirens’: Alarms and Affects

It seems likely that the titular sirens are not meant to allure—rather, they are a political alarm. “Sirens,” Jaar’s most socially engaged album to date, is a surprisingly mature exploration of the connections between the current political realities of both Chile and the U.S., and his relationship with his father.