Take Heart
Samuel Beckett’s novel, Murphy, sold exactly six copies in its first year of publication. adapted, Eliot Weinberger, Written Reaction
Category: Writing
The Best Minds of My Generation: For Rob Trousdale and Lindsey Trout Hughes
Re: Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation:A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan Dear Rob and Lindsey, I’m grateful to you both for sharing your writing with me and through…
“Reds and Yellows” by Parvuna Sulaiman
Jennifer Lowe invited me to be on the collective of readers to decide the winner of SLU’s Library Associates Undergraduate Writing Award this spring. I encourage you to read “Reds and Yellows,” the creative nonfiction…
At Home in the World: A Summer Writing Class 2017
Thich Nhat Hanh is regarded by many as one of the most skillful and pragmatic of spiritual teachers. In 2016 he published At Home in the World, a succinct autobiography of his ninety years of…
Thanks, Jack
I first read this in August 2005, a seed Dear Layla came out in 2015, fruit That is why I want to use short chapters, each with verselike heading, and very many such chapters; slowly,…
Reading Leads to Writing
1. Yesterday I was rereading Chilean poet Nicanor Parra’s After-Dinner Declarations, which I first read in 2013, and came across this page with my scribbles: 2. In Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, these scribbles became…
The Good News of Publishing a Novel, 4.19.2017
At Amazon.com, I see that my friend Jason Makansi’s novel, The Moment Before, will be out in November. It’s about “a woman and her beloved Syrian father, separated forty years earlier when he is swept…
The Good News of the Barakats, 4.6.2017
Last night, Sharifa Barakat and I had dinner at Central Cafe (along with Imman Musa and Dania Saffaf Atienza). Sarah Dwidar introduced me to Sharifa her freshman year at SLU on sunny day on West…
The Good News, 3.8.2017
I once asked Mayuko and Minami (both in my fall 8 a.m. MWF Humanities class) if they had heard of Sei Shōnagon (清少納言). Of course they had! They had read her years ago in school. …
The Good News, 3.5.2017
The Good News is … Natalie Long has a working title for a memoir to come— Wander, Work, Eat, Agitate Natalie discussing how a Community Bill of Rights challenges an unjust legal structure that elevates…