Blogs

A longish essay I wrote last year has appeared in the twentieth-anniversary issue of the terrific literary journal War, Literature & the Arts. It's a print journal with an online site, and since ...

As I've said, one of the nice things about the AWP conference was meeting in person some of those whom I've only known online. One of these was Sean Carman, a very funny writer I've appreciated from ...

Look, I’m not a conference guy. I’m a walk in the woods guy, an afternoon tea guy, a thicken-the-stew-with-flour, ...

The AWP is wrapping up today, and we’ll be jumping on a train later tonight, but I wanted to get one more post in before shutting down the IHE Suite. I’ll have some final thoughts on the ...

My colleague Rory did an astonishingly competent job yesterday serving as moderator for the tribute to William Gass, sponsored by the University of Illinois Creative Writing Program and the Carr ...

There was a small incident ten minutes into today’s AWP panel “Shameless Promotion: Get the Book to the Readers.” It was advertised as a session where “two poets, a novelist, and a ...

Here's a pre-recorded version of the nonfiction reading I did today at AWP. Parts of it have appeared in different form in the journal Brevity, in my column at McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and ...

There are many temptations in the big city for a couple of fellers in from the literary countryside. Today was opening day of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Chicago, and ...

I’m working to clear the decks for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Chicago next week, including polishing the essay I’ll read there. I had hoped to stream my ...

I continue today to be educated in new ways to freeze to death in a Victorian house. Though the thermostat maintains its adequate setting, subtle but powerful air currents strip the body of vital ...