ByGD
View from Perlan, near the hotel where I will be staying.
Tomorrow I leave for Iceland! While I’m there, I plan to focus on the Iceland Writers Retreat workshops, but I have posts – mostly book reviews – scheduled while I’m gone. Bonus: all of the books are by authors who are involved in the retreat, and whom I will very likely meet this week. Read More
ByGD
As a testament to how overwhelming AWP can be, I forgot to take pictures all 3 days. This is my book fair haul.
I wasn’t going to attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2014 conference. AWP is rooted, as the name implies, in academic programs and has a literary focus that is only tangential to the technical and journalistic writing I usually do. But I want more “creative” in my nonfiction. Some thirteen thousand people from all over the U.S. traveled to Seattle for the event; I didn’t even have to change my morning commute (same bus, three stops early). It seemed like the universe was handing me an opportunity. So with little more preparation than a warning about people in pointy shoes, I signed up for three days of literary frenzy. Read More
ByGD
In preparation for Iceland Writers Retreat, I am reading books by each of the featured authors. It feels a little weird to review authors who are about to become my teachers, but it’s easier to read critically when I know I have to report on it afterwards. I had already read Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders; I enjoyed it as a reader. As a writer I enjoyed trying to understand her choices: writing about survival instead of adventure, building an overtly feminist story within a culture that was anything but. My library holds on the remaining authors hadn’t come in yet, so I started People of the Book. By the second page, her Sam Spade of a protagonist had grabbed me by the throat, and she didn’t let go until days after I finished reading. Read More
ByGD
In the introduction to My Kind of Place, Susan Orlean confesses that she loves to travel – even to places that don’t sound wonderful. When the collection of essays begins with a taxidermy convention in Springfield, Illinois, it is immediately apparent that she means it. Read More
ByGD
Image by Gratisography.com
This year, I am trying to learn from my blog stats, but as usual, in January I was distracted by the more creative search terms that led to this site: