Dan Wiencek and the folks at McSweeney’s provide some humorous launch pads for your writing. Thirteen Writing Prompts contains such wonderful catalysts as “Write a short scene set at a lake, with trees and shit. Throw some birds in there, too.” Or, if that doesn’t strike your fancy, try to “Write a scene showing a man…
Too many good books sitting on your desk is a good problem to have. A number of excellent reads are being released right around the same time and I’m enjoying the hell out of them. It makes for a lot of work because I need to crank out reviews, but it remains a pleasure. Here…
Also in the New York Times this past weekend was Roger Mudd’s commentary on the special opening of Eudora Welty’s home to the public. Mudd even divulges Welty’s comical crab casserole recipe.
In yesterday’s New York Times, James Frey’s controversial memoir A Million Little Pieces clocked in at number ten on the Paperback Nonfiction best seller list. The book has spent 32 weeks on the charts and the newspaper’s description of the memoir is that it “contains numerous fabrications.” It has been about 13 weeks since Oprah’s well-publicized…
Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, Glue, and others, is standing up for a friend facing deportation. Chilean refugee Ernesto Leal, 41, is being housed at Belmarsh Prison and his family fears he will be forced from the country. But Welsh told the Scottish Press Association that “He may have a Chilean background but he’s as Scottish…