Archive for January, 2007

San Francisco Library Laureates Dinner

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

The annual Library Laureates Dinner, sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, will take place on April 20, 2007. Among this year’s thirty-plus local authors are Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, Ben Fong-Torres, Dave Eggers, , Vikram Chandra, Richard North Patterson, Peter Coyote, Joyce Maynard, Orville Schell, ZZ Packer, Sean Wilsey, and yours [...]

THE YEAR OF FOG : BD Reader Review Selection

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

THE YEAR OF FOG (March 2007) has been named the Bantam Dell Reader Review Selection for February. This means 20 contestants will win an Advance Reading Copy. Bantam will publish reader reviews of the novel in their BD Reads newsletter in April.
For details, go here.
To learn more about the book, visit the Fog page [...]

unwanted

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

By way of Maud Newton, a place to send the stories nobody wants:
The Rejected Quarterly rejected fiction contest.

letters, + reading tonight

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

Letters written by Anne Frank’s father before the family went into hiding have been found and will be released on February 14.
The sheaf of Otto Frank’s letters, about 80 documents in total, show him seeking escape routes to Spain, exit visas from Paris and help to get to the United States or Cuba, all in [...]

virgin birth

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

5 baby Komodo dragons born to a mama dragon who’s nary touched a boy.
From AP:
A British zoo announced Wednesday the virgin birth of five Komodo dragons, giving scientists new hope for the captive breeding of the endangered species. In an evolutionary twist, the newborns’ eight-year-old mother Flora shocked staff at Chester Zoo in northern England [...]

bad theft

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

Here’s the funniest heist story ever, and it’s not a movie. It took place in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights. According to the Chronicle, the thieves made away with 2.5 million dollars in goods while the homeowner (an heir to a locksmithing fortune!), was away. Neighbors thought the thieves were movers. Soon thereafter, one of the [...]

first review for THE YEAR OF FOG

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

I’m happy to report that I can breathe a bit easier now that the first review is in for THE YEAR OF FOG (March). From Publisher’s Weekly:
“In this spare page-turner, Richmond draws complex tensions from the set-up of a child gone missing…The book’s twist on missing child stories is wholly effective. The book is beautifully [...]

kenyon review links

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

I just received the latest Kenyon Review newsletter today, and a quick trip to the website reminded me that KR has a great list of litmags up–very useful if you’re in the submission zone.

last night at the Rickshaw Stop

Friday, January 19th, 2007

Last night at Inside Storytime, Karl Soehnlein read the sexiest story ever, about a gay guy who’s jonesing for his girl roommate Lou. Taelur Kim read his hilarious story, “Rock War,” a parable about a girl who gets herself invited to the boys’ weekly battle and proceeds to run the show–I heard this story at [...]

for the love of chickens

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Jennie Durant, who’s recently arrived in the Philippines on a Fullbright, pens an ode to chickens. She recommends a documentary called The Natural History of Chickens.
Apparently, a man cut his chicken’s head off and it ran around for awhile—but didn’t stop. Shocked by this Lazarus of a chicken, he decided to see if it [...]

Booknotes, Litlife, & Writing Prompts from bestselling author Michelle Richmond