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 […]
This week in my Tutorial Advising class we had the pleasure of hosting Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks is Dead, which argues, of course, the exact opposite. Ada offered keen insight into the life of the working writer and editor (she’s both), and provided evidence once again of the significance of community in developing a singular voice. We read […]
The writer Kathryn Joyce has written a remarkable essay for Pacific Standard that I hope some of my students will read. Part of the larger conversation about PTSD I’ve been having all year in light of Jennifer Percy’s Demon Camp, this essay, set in upstate New York, is moving and useful and spectacularly written. Here’s a snippet. The […]
My food writing class this week is reading J.M Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, largely for its focus on the relationship between imagination and ethics. The only fiction we read in the class, the novel has captured for me some very basic ideas about the power of sympathy, what Coetzee calls the the faculty “that allows us to share the being of another.” […]
This week, the writer Jennifer Percy visited my Tutorial Advising class to discuss several of her own reported pieces, including one for the New York Times Magazine that sent her into Syria to get the story of American vigilantes trying to fight ISIS, and also to reflect a little on the writing of Leslie Jamison. Percy raised […]
This Thursday, March 10, I’m helping to host an event that features one of the writers we read last semester in my religion writing course, Peter Manseau (“Call Waiting”). I’ll also be reading. The event is sponsored by Killing the Buddha, which published essays we read by Ashley Makar. The event is really in celebration of a book called […]
I am fortunate to have opportunities to read books before they are published, sometimes because I may want to write a piece of criticism, other times because I have a friend with a book coming out. Right now I’m thrilled to be reading three forthcoming books, Deborah Shapiro’s The Sun in Your Eyes (June 28), Daniel Reaburn’s Vessels (March 14), and Justine van der Leun’s We […]
