Books, Chocolate, Sundries.

I’m excited to be teaching a new workshop about journal writing at the Writer’s League of Texas on Saturday. This subject is very close to my heart—I’ve been keeping a journal since I was ten years old, and almost daily since I was seventeen (I have nearly a hundred of them now). Keeping a journal [...]

I have a new essay in The New York Times today about my son’s experience in the NICU. I wrote the essay after I’d seen a pregnant friend and had found myself telling her what a “great experience” my family had in the NICU. I realized how strange that sounded, and went home and wrote [...]

I hope the year is off to a great start for everyone! One of my favorite discoveries of 2012 was a new kind of chocolate: My husband brought these back from a business trip to London. The packaging was so pretty I almost didn’t want to open them (but somehow managed to). They’re from Rococo [...]

After four years apart, my election boyfriend and I are hot and heavy again. I’d missed Nate’s manly statistics, his rippling calculations, his swoon-worthy algorithms. In four years, we’ve both changed a lot. His site is now part of The New York Times! Oh Nate, I’m not the only one who loves you. Right now, [...]

It’s been a long, long time since I last posted—I’ve been busy revising my new novel, working on essays, teaching classes, and raising the kids. What better day to start posting again than Julia Child’s hundredth birthday? One of my favorite books that I’ve read in the last few years is Julia Child’s memoir My [...]

There’s a beautiful quote from Junot Diaz in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine education issue: “I do not remember her voice, but I do remember that every time I saw her, she called me to her desk and showed me with an almost conspiratorial glee a book she had picked out for me, a [...]

We got back from vacation in Vermont last week—we had an amazing time there, though we arrived home just a few days before the flood. We stayed near Waterbury, which I read at one point became flooded with 10 feet of water. . . I hope they’ll be able to recover soon. I love Vermont—it’s [...]

I’m not sure why the writing advice books don’t ever mention the necessity of chocolate to finishing a book. I’m deep in (final, hopefully) revision mode, which means I’m stockpiling the chocolate. I was thrilled to read in the news not long ago that chocolate (and hot chocolate and chocolate milk) is also healthy. I [...]

Tags: Chocolate

I had an amazing time teaching at the 826 Michigan conference—I loved my students, and it was great to meet Betsy Lerner. I’d read Betsy’s book The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers ten years ago, when it first came out and all my writer friends were passing it around. She’s even [...]

1. A little backstory… I got the idea for this essay after I went to a small publishing conference for independent bookstores and local authors hosted at BookPeople here in Austin, TX. While hanging out with the staff afterward, we somehow got on the subject of shoplifted books. Steve, the owner, told me that the [...]

Tags: Interviews, Jeff Sharlet, Jeffrey Eugenides, John Palfrey, NYTBR, Paul Auster, Sherman Alexie, stolen books