So much has happened. This is the point The New Yorker‘s Hilton Als makes in his essay “Prince, Cecil Taylor, and Beyoncé’s Shape-Shifting Black Body,” my read for the week. (A close second is Questlove’s remembrance of Prince in Rolling Stone.) All I can do is quote this. About Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” Als writes: Toward the end of the film, as the […]

After Gay Talese said something unfortunate regarding women writers—that none, apparently, had inspired him—a few weeks ago, the writer Ann Friedman put together a long list of writers he might go back and read, or maybe reread. I hope all my students will look at this list, from New York Magazine. Image above of Mary McCarthy.

Over two consecutive weeks (!), the writer and editor Anna Holmes came to speak with my Tutorial Advising class, very much about what’s practical and useful in deciding to make a go at the writing life. In addition to her generosity—interrupted by the end of our first hour, she said, “I can come back next week,” and then she did—Holmes brought […]

I very often return to the essays of John McPhee in my writing classes. This semester we’ve read his long essay about oranges and now, with our reading this week, two of his recent craft essays from The New Yorker (listed here in the category “The Writing Life”). Our reading from this week contains one of the most inspirational writing lessons I’ve ever […]

This week, Witches of America author Alex Mar came to visit my Tutorial Advising class, bringing with her stories of traveling the country reporting on the occult. She described the process of turning a proposal that was more or less reporting into a book that’s at least one-half memoir. Mar, whose documentary American Mystic was also a topic […]

This past week in my food writing class we watched Julia Child’s first episode of The French Chef and also read a 2009 essay by Michael Pollan called “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.” At home I watched his television program Cooked, out now on Netflix. This would make me feel terrible if there were not a huge pot […]