Blogs

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 ...

A month ago I posted about suddenly thinking to change my creative nonfiction (CNF) class to a food theme this semester. It was too late to practically make this decision, but I made it happen ...

My occasional book the past few weeks has been Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu (Columbia UP, 1967), translated by the great Burton Watson. The philosophical writing covers from ...

For those of you who will attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Chicago next month, I hope to see you there. In addition to being Inside Higher Ed’s boots on the ...

My nomination a couple of weeks ago for the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching required letters of support from past and present students. When I read the two letters that ...

The indomitable Professor Cohen writes in response to my most recent post about creative nonfiction and food: Okay, so I'm teaching a course this spring called “Science, Technology, and ...

In the past my creative nonfiction class has been an immersive project in times and places important to students’ lives—memoir, but with an emphasis on looking outward more than in, probing and ...

“When at a loss how to go on, cough,” says an ancient Greek proverb. Or so claims 10,000 Jokes, Toasts and Stories: A Mammoth Encyclopedia of Wit and Humor (Doubleday, 1939, last updated 1965), ...