Day 10.1 Friday, April 16, 2010 Stranded still. The volcano continues to spew, the European authorities in charge of their respective airspaces continue to freak out, many of our fellow passengers are growing irrationally angry, and it’s looking more and more like we’re in this for a longer haul than anyone would like. We wokeContinue reading “The Netherlands: Days 10.1 & 10.2 (the Great Volcano Standstill, 2010)”
Category Archives: fiction
A Writer’s Notebook: Script Frenzy
So, as you might know, my planned 10-day interruption in participating in Script Frenzy turned into two and a half weeks, because we were stuck in Amsterdam for a week trying to figure out how to get home. Then I was resting up, then working on other projects, like my travel journal…. Needless to say,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Script Frenzy”
The good times are killing me
We writers and academics love to ask each other what books we’d want with us if ever we’re stranded on a desert island, and we love offering clever, literary answers: Jane Austen, Cormac McCarthy, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dhammapada. But we’re lying to ourselves.
A Writer’s Notebook: Three perspectives
I have several friends who are visual artists, some of whom also write. In comments on previous blog posts and via several e-mails, I’ve been chatting about the relationship between art and writing with my friends Lori Ann Bloomfield and Crystal Elerson, and I thought it might be fun to try a sketching exercise asContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Three perspectives”
After life
Look upon the world as a bubble, regard it as a mirage; who thus perceives the world, him Mara, the king of death, does not see. ~ Dhammapada, Canto XIII, verse 170 I’ve become a student of many aspects of many religions, but one of the areas I pay most attention to is death andContinue reading “After life”
The Road
It’s been a long time coming. When I first heard Cormac McCarthy‘s brilliant novel The Road was being developed as a film, I noted the release date on my mental calendar and held my breath. That was back in early 2008. When the movie finally did get released more than a year and a halfContinue reading “The Road”
The hardest thing about writing
I’m preparing one of my novels for submission, and I’m writing a synopsis. I hate synopses. Like all prejudice, it’s an irrational loathing–I always feel like I’m crushing the story, stripping away the beauty and leaving just a skeleton, and I can’t help but think that if people want to know what a book isContinue reading “The hardest thing about writing”
New publication
FYI: I have a new story in the current issue of Temenos literary journal. You can read it online here. For links to some of my other publications, check out my Publications page.
International Prize for Arabic Fiction
This is a bit slow in coming, but I’m working on an article for Driftless about reading culture and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, and I remembered that last year around this time I posted about the shortlist and winner for the Booker-sponsored International Prize for Arabic Fiction. So I thought I’d post theContinue reading “International Prize for Arabic Fiction”
The importance of Prince Henry the Navigator was in the inspiration
If I ever have a chance to teach a freshman seminar course — to explain to students in their first several weeks what it’s going to take to succeed in college and what the value of their education might be — this would be my entire syllabus: Peg took courses, a different course each winter,Continue reading “The importance of Prince Henry the Navigator was in the inspiration”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 