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Photograph of a harbor with sailboats docked.

A Writer’s Life

Awake.  This far north the sun is an early riser, though it stays groggy with fog till mid-morning.  The red-checked garter snake still sleeps beneath the front stoop; the window spider still clings to the center of last night’s web, spangled with wings.  The desultory cries of a crow.  An old engine clearing its throat…

Cover art for Anna North's America Pacifica

America Pacifica

America Pacifica: A Novel Anna North Reagan Arthur Books, May 2011 304 pages $24.99 In her debut novel, Anna North dares to enter the dystopic territory staked out by the ruling high priestesses of literary speculative fiction, Margaret Atwood and Octavia E. Butler: America Pacifica features an ordinary heroine with an extraordinary destiny; a punishing climate;…

Cover art of George Plimpton's The Writer's Chapbook

Why I Reread The Writer’s Chapbook

I love The Writer’s Chapbook. Compiled by the late, great George Plimpton from the Paris Review’s Writers at Work series, this volume is a collection of wisdom from 20th Century writers about anything and everything literary, from first efforts to children’s books, from sex to writers’ colonies (which often go hand-in-hand).  The section on technique…

A stone engraving of Geoffrey Chaucer's head surrounded by a wreath

Better Late

According to my medievalist spouse, Geoffrey Chaucer entered into the prime of his literary career, which has spanned the intervening five centuries, around the age of 40.  Presumably he was writing some things before that, and we can quibble about whether to count as major The Book of the Duchess (medievalist spouse:  “are you mad? …

Cover art for Daniel Orozco's Orientation

Orientation

Orientation Daniel Orozco Faber & Faber, May 2011 176 pages $23.00 In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work,) a book of essays and photos, Alain de Botton attempts an “exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully evoking what other people get up to all day—and night—to make the frenzied contemporary world…