THE YEAR OF FOG is the featured book in the May issue of Hallmark Magazine, and it’s also featured this week in the Mother’s Day Gift Guide of People Magazine. Which gives me an idea–if you buy the book for your mother, drop me an email (fogtalk at gmail dot com) and I’ll write a note to your mother on my personal stationery. Please be sure to include a snail mail address in your email; I can send my note either directly to your mom, or I can send it to you for you to include with the book....
Monthly Archives: May 2007
Vice, Virgins, Detectives, and Cops
Just received my copies of Brad Vice’s The Bear Bryant Funeral Train from editor Jim Gilbert at River City Publishing. Interesting new cover featuring a film reel gives nod to the subject of the title story. This version of the book that caused such a stir (read my essay about it here in Oxford American) contains new essays by Jake York, John Dufresne, Don Noble, and yours truly. The new version was released on March 27. Plus, Eric Martin’s third novel, The Virgin’s Guide to Mexico, is out tomorrow. Hear him at his only San Francisco reading Saturday night...
Why Life As an Adjunct Untenable in Urban Areas
I’ve been teaching at California College of the Arts in San Francisco since 2001. At the time I began teaching there, I was awaiting the publication of my first book; now, I have a third book to my name. Like many of the part-time faculty in the MFA program in creative writing at California College of the Arts (CCA), I have years of teaching experience at the graduate and undergraduate level, including two stints as Distinguished Visiting Writer. Also like most, I have the usual array of awards and literary magazine publications on my c.v.. And like everyone else...
Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje
I’ve just finished reading the ARC of Michael Ondaatje’s extraordinary new novel Divisadero, which will be published in May. The book begins with a harrowing familial violence on a farm in Petaluma and ends in another country at another time. San Francisco residents will recognize the title, which is the street where the novel’s overriding consciousness, Anna, lives as an adult. I say “overriding consciousness” because, while Anna narrates some portions of the novel, there are also large swaths of omniscience, as well as points at which the omniscient narrator collides, unexpectedly, with Anna’s voice. Years after the violence...
Mustache-a-Thon, + Reba’s Caddy
826 Valencia is having a Mustache-a-Thon to raise money for their excellent, unique free programming for kids. Yes, mustaches are no longer just for firemen. “Over six weeks, they’ll carefully tend to their emerging mustaches, meet weekly at a neighborhood bar to show off their progress, and swap tips on waxing ends. We’ll take weekly photographs to add to our online library of the ‘stache-stages.” Read about it here. And this from Reba McMellon down South: I’ve been compelled to start a list of cars that catch my eye. Rusted dark blue valiant, powder pink Mary Kaye Cadillac with...
The international bestseller about one woman’s search for a missing child…
"Mesmerizing." ~Library Journal, starred review.
Stop dreaming, start writing!
