Hey folks, Here’s your reminder that one week from today I’ll publish the first of four posts dedicated to our group reading of The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing. (Details in this post, in case you missed it.) …
You, Me, and Doris Lessing gets underway in just one week! Read more »
A proposal Hey. You. Want to read a book with me? I just finished rereading To the Light House, as part of A Public Space’s group read. It was my first time revisiting the book in at least seventeen years, …
We’ve had a cold spring here in Portland, and a wet one. The wet is to be expected, but the cold dragged on longer than usual. Lots of dreary 40- to 50-degree days. Lots of cold rain, lots of hail. …
My agent is shopping my new novel, The Narrow Place, around to editors right now. I’m a slightly nauseated mix of hopeful and terrified about the whole thing, which is, I think, a fairly reasonable response to putting years of …
Consider this your permission to make shit up. Recently, a student asked me, “If you could go back in time to give yourself advice as you were writing The Revolution of Every Day, what would you say?” Good question, yeah? …
Like many novelists, teaching is my primary income source. Luckily, it’s work that I love to do. It feels like right livelihood, like I’m truly helping people. My goal in my fiction workshops is to create a warm, welcoming community …
I’ve been quiet the past few weeks because our family was up to our necks in the mucky ending of the first semester and I had to go into Family Project Manager overdrive mode. We all got through it, to …
Happy New Year! I hope the final stretch of 2022 was good to you. I’m emerging from a mostly delicious holiday cocoon, somewhat irritated that it’s time to get back to waking up to alarms and doing work and being …
Refilling the well with a nice, lighthearted murder Read more »
We’re well into the cold and gray and dark here in Portland, and with 2022 coming to a close with alarming swiftness (seriously, what the hell is happening with this passage of time shit? SLOW DOWN!), it feels like a …
In my last letter to you, I talked about catching covid on the way to Spain this summer, and I briefly mentioned dragging my covid-negative-but-still-sickly ass around Toledo in the name of novel research. The book is mostly set in …