This is the way the world bounces. Sometimes In the good old days when schools and libraries bought many children’s books, editors used to pop on over to Book Expo (where bookstore people saw new books) and to the annual conventions of the International Reading Association and the American Library Association. Most of the big NY publishers and
Alas. Suffering…who needs it? No thank you. But no matter how many times we decline the invitation, most of us discover the knocking never stops. And often the guest barges right in and stays. I can’t look at any of the pictures of Hurricane Sandy without remembering that day when we were finally, FINALLY let
Despair. Every artist feels it, I’m pretty sure. My feelings about the novel I’m finishing up have zinged all over the place. Now that I finally know what I want in each of my chapters, though, I can work any time and any place, including this chair in a hotel in Albuquerque last week. “You
All the published authors I know are introverts. One of my friends was talking about being part of an incoming class in the Vermont College MFA in children’s writing. At the get-to-know-you session, people were asked to move here and there in the room depending on such things as where in the world they live…or
Revision time. I am in Boston on the edge of my annual writing retreat…it’s shocking to think that this group has been getting together for something like seventeen years. Our lives, our writing, our despairs, our soaring bits…they are woven together. Nancy Werlin and I went to Dian Curtis Regan’s wedding in Colorado Springs this
I’m thinking today of my friend Liz who adopted a child from Ethiopia and ended up with a whole new life handed to her. Or maybe she grabbed it. When I first met her, she had decided she needed to bring clean water to the area where her son was born. The amount she had
What happens when we become unmoored? The image–I think–is instantly uncomfortable. Floaty. At sea. Everything slipping past. Often, though, when we become unmoored we open our eyes and hearts in new ways, which always happens to me on author visits to places where I’ve never been. I was thinking about this in Switzerland as I
Ethiopia Reads (www.ethiopiareads.org) is a new oganization. Same name. Some of the same people. But a whole lot of new conversations and new people on the team and a whole lot of new programs because Ethiopia Reads programming and the Tesfa Foundation (www.tesfa.org) programming are going to be integrated from now on. Now we’re looking
John Fuller writes that between running a print shop, making up the US postal system and America’s first lending library, and seed-planting for the revolution, Ben Franklin “also found time to draw up a vast collection of new devices.” And he never patented any of them. “Pretty good for a bored-looking guy on the $100
As I travel to Minneapolis for an Ethiopia Reads (www.ethiopiareads.org) board retreat, I’m getting my bearings by–what else?–reading a book. My very smart baby sister recommended it because it helped her in her work at Reed College. Managing Transition: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges is written just for times like these in
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