.... here's who I am. My name is Katie Haegele. I live in a quiet old neighborhood on the outskirts of Philadelphia. My last name is German and I pronouce it hayglee. In college I studied linguistics, and I’m still very interested in the thing some people think makes us human. (Language, that is. I happen to think that treating other people and living creatures with kindness is what makes us human, but that rules out certain people, doesn’t it?) I like to write creative nonfiction things best, I think; maybe poems. And zines. I love zines.

I've published my work in newspapers, magazines, and books, including the Utne Reader, Bitch magazine, Adbusters, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the late great Philadelphia Independent, PW, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Comics Journal, and the literary magazine 400 Words. If you want to read more about my writing or my zines, have a look at this nice interview with me in the literary magazine apt, or this more recent article in Time magazine. My zine about language, The La-La Theory, was included in this nifty report on the BBC News website. My first book, a memoir that started life as a zine, will come out in April of 2012. I read from the zine on the radio show These Things That People Make, which is hosted and created by the fantastic Sarah Mangle. Go listen to it!

If you want to talk about writing or zines or books or anything, write to me at katie at thelalatheory dot com.

Here's another one.

Oh, were you wondering where the la-la theory name came from? I've seen it explained and attributed differently in different sources, but here's what I know about it. During the nineteenth century, scientists and philosophers were interested in figuring out the origins of language. Some of their theories were pretty fanciful. The pooh-pooh theory, for instance, suggested that human speech came from the instinctive sounds early people made out of frustration and anger. The la-la theory put forth that language was borne of the human need to express music, poetry and love. Both Darwin and a Danish linguist named Otto Jespersen thought that emotion inspired music, which they believed could have been the predecessor to language. Jespersen wrote, "[Love] inspired many of the first songs, and through them was instrumental in bringing about human language."

Ideas and theories go in and out of fashion, but this one will always feel good to me.