On Wednesday 22 August, we will discuss Iraqi novelist Mahmoud Saeed’s short 2004 work, Saddam City.* We meet on the 4th Wednesday of the even-numbered months at the Center for Survivors of Torture and War…
In late August, we will resume our monthly Introduction to Poets gathering. I will be happy to share on the life and work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whom I would occasionally see on the streets of…
Gracias a la palabra que agradece, gracias a gracias por cuanto esta palabra derrite nieve o hierro.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav: “The world says that stories are good to put a person to sleep, but I say that with stories you arouse people from sleep.” — Sol Lipkin, A History of Yiddish Literature
Once an aging actress told [Abbé] Mugnier, “When I pass in front of my mirror, I cry out, ‘How beautiful I am!’ Is that a sin?” “No,” murmured the abbé, “It’s only an error.” –From…
A friend in Haiti asked me to send her the following passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and now I want to reread the whole novel again! Later, after getting used to Alyosha, Pyotr Alexandrovich…
You write out my poems, filling monastery walls, and I crowd these door-screens here with yours. Old friend, we never know where it is we’ll meet– we two duckweed leaves adrift on such vast seas….
For our fifth Introduction to Poets discussion, Becca Gorley will share with us her appreciation of Adrienne Rich. We will meet on Wednesday 18 April at 7:30 p.m. at the home of Katy Didden– 3538…
This year I have invited people to participate in an Arab Writers in Translation Reading Circle. Last month, several friends and I met to discuss Egyptian writer Nawal El-Saadawi’s 1983 Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,…
Leonardo packing up the Mona Lisa in 1516 to live near the King of France You have to be ready for ridicule The plane plops on the beach in 1903 after just a minute You…