I’m over at LitHub today, with the opening essay to a new feature in the Virginia Quarterly Review. The print issue, on Citizenship, is well worth a read – and VQR in general is one of the best journals out there. Here’s an excerpt (below). You can read the complete essay here. . . .
Read MoreThis is a story in two parts. And this picture has nothing to do with it, but it’s a cool photograph. Because even though I grew up in a place where a leather jacket would be truly odd to own and even odder to don, I think it’s kind of cool. . . .
Read MoreI’m over at The Boston Globe reviewing the brilliant Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marías. The full review is here. Here is the opening: If we deceive a beloved friend, lover, or country to love longer, is it betrayal? That question anchors a novel whose vision is fixed on Spain’s bloody civil . . .
Read MoreI am over at the New York Times Book Review writing about Anuk Arudpragasam’s debut novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage. You can read the full review here. Here is the opening: War is a constant wellspring of literature, and the best of it looks not for the obvious and sensationally . . .
Read MoreOver there on Huffington Post taking about the elections. You can read the full article here. Below, a taste. Affecting change takes time and diligence and real effort. It takes discipline and thoughtfulness and a full on commitment to holding feet to fires and noses to grindstones. It doesn’t come from signing . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post with a review of Sunil Yapa’s new novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. You can read the review here, the opening below: In Colum McCann’s latest book, Thirteen Ways of Looking (Random House, 2015), a young soldier looks out over the . . .
Read MoreElectric Literature asked a few of us authors to write about the life of David Bowie. Here are a few samples from some of us (below). The full series can be read there. Sasha Hemon: “The greatest thing about Heroes was that I didn’t understand it; I couldn’t enter it to appropriate . . .
Read MoreI’m Buddhist, and grew up that way, but with the lovely influence of other people’s religions pervading my life. A Roman Catholic Convent and a Christian Missionary School, many notations on a prayer book of novenas said at the All Saint’s Church in Borella as well as numerous coconuts split and baskets . . .
Read MoreIt’s been seven months. Rats. But then again, Palestine, Paris, London, Sri Lanka, my college room-mate’s wedding, teaching in Colorado, a book launch and more travel, I’ve been a touch busy. Still, this struck me today, so this is a brief ode to a few things. First, this: the last rose of . . .
Read MorePhilip Weiss, who attended the launch of Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, at the Center for Fiction, covered the event for Mondoweiss. Here is an excerpt. “In yet another sign that solidarity with Palestinians is now a central political value of liberal/left American culture, about 150 people jammed a room in . . .
Read MoreThe Middle East Monitor did a write-up of the anthology I edited, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, which is up on their site. Here’s an excerpt: “I didn’t want it to be for and against because frankly I don’t think it is against human beings anywhere even in Israel,” explains Freeman. . . .
Read MoreTen years ago, when I didn’t know narrative from Narrative Magazine, I sat at a dining table with Dimitri Kasaan, and another writer whose repute and influence was beyond my small understanding at the time. It was early and in my memory we were the only ones there. He was talking about . . .
Read MoreI read a tweet yesterday that kind of broke my heart a little. Someone I know and like said they did not believe in boycotts because they had “fought too hard to be included.” The person in question was referring to the PEN controversy. My own feelings about the attacks on Charlie . . .
Read MoreI was delighted to be sent the link to this wonderful review that focusses on the use of the omniscient voice in On Sal Mal Lane, by Michael Noll, for his “Learning to Write” series. Michael is the brains behind the site, Read to Write Stories. It came exactly as I was . . .
Read MoreThere’s been a spate of articles about who funds our writing, and the glorious writing life (which always includes publication), that might have awaited if only money had not been the object. Most people fall somewhere between Bauer and what, in the American literary world, is apparently considered the hard-knock life. I . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post, with an interview with the redoubtable Willy Darlymple on the Jaipur Literary Festival which began today. Here’s an excerpt. The full interview can be found here. A few days ago, William Dalrymple, famed architect of the Zee Jaipur Literary Festival which opened today, posted the following . . .
Read MoreI had grand plans this morning. I was going to open up my various pieces of writing and send them off to sundry recepients from my agent to editors at journals near and far. Instead I’m sitting here feeling slightly paralyzed by my feelings about the attacks in Paris, and the response . . .
Read MoreThe people who really know me, know that FB is not the story of my life. Well, it’s not the story of anybody’s life, but it’s been a real long spell of “not-really-my-life,” for me. And yet, it is, in some good solid ways. Despite my very strong and often contrarian points . . .
Read MoreThe last time I had Thanksgiving at home was in 2009, the year my mother passed away. I returned from her funeral and the attendant ceremonies (traditions I wrote about in an essay for Narrative, much later), and realized that there were certain obligations I had kept that I just could not . . .
Read More…is pretty damn awesome, I have to say. And the folk at Rochester University know how to make a girl feel like a queen. I’ve been all over the place but somehow the city of Rochester clung to me in a different way. I was sick, but felt compelled to visit the . . .
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