ANTOINETTE CEA-LOPES
Welcome!
My name is Antoinette Cea-Lopes, and I’m the voice behind The Literary Guillotine — a blog dedicated to the close reading, critical analysis, and continued interrogation of the literature we consume and cherish.
I am a lifelong resident of Monmouth County, New Jersey. I received my B.A. in English from The Catholic University of America, where I also pursued minors in Theology & Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Medieval & Byzantine Studies. After marrying my college sweetheart, Dan, and beginning our family, I returned to graduate study and earned my M.A. in Historical and Systematic Theology at St. John’s University, where I served as a graduate assistant and deepened my passion for the interplay between narrative, doctrine, and history.
My academic interests — particularly in hermeneutics, theology, and cultural critique — inform much of my analysis. Before this blog I worked in editing and education. These roles sharpened my attention to language, structure, and the pedagogical value of literature. The Literary Guillotine serves as a space to fuse these threads: part classroom, part salon, part open forum for challenging assumptions embedded in both popular and canonical texts.
Outside the classroom and the blog, I’m also a mother of three, a horror movie devotee, an avid home cook, and a lover of good books and better wine.
If you believe literature deserves both reverence and rigorous critique, you’re in the right place.
Let’s turn the page together.
The Literary Guillotine is a blog and podcast devoted to critical engagement with literature — a place where stories are not only enjoyed, but interrogated. Founded on the belief that literature shapes our moral, cultural, and spiritual imaginations, this space brings together academic rigor and personal insight to examine the texts that move us, challenge us, and demand our attention.
Here, no genre is off-limits and no trope escapes critique. Drawing from backgrounds in theology, philosophy, history, and literary studies, The Literary Guillotine explores how literature reflects and refracts the deeper questions of human life — from sacrificial love to systemic power, from mythic archetypes to modern anxieties.
Whether you’re a scholar, a student, or simply a reader who likes your fiction with a side of theory, you’ll find a space here for dialogue, disagreement, and discovery. Expect close readings, thematic essays, cultural commentary, and the occasional red pen.
Literature matters. Let’s read like it does.
