Shape Shifters

In the past few days, before the book fair even starts, we have met with publishers, editors, and agents from China, Japan, England, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Los Angeles. Everyone is looking for one thing: the next Twilight. Makes me wonder, if everyone is looking for the same thing, why can’t they find [...]

‘Til Death Do Us Part

Last night went to the much touted Literary Death Match, hosted by none other than our beguiling Erin Hosier and the kinetic Todd Zuniga. All in the service of a literary magazine called Opium. And from what I could gather twenty and thirty somethings hooking up. Very fun, as you know mother doesn’t get out much. [...]

Gravy

Just got my royalty statement from Penguin. It comes in a large envelope with a window pane. (Cellophane not to be confused with late 70′s acid.)  I still find it miraculous that after nine years the book is still earning a royalty. Not a fortune, mind you. But enough to buy a bracelet and a [...]

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy

It isn’t every day that a poetry dog fight makes the front pages of the New York Times. Makes me feel proud. Makes me feel alive. Seems that Ruth Padel, the first woman to be elected to Oxford University’s prestigious chair in poetry, resigned. She admitted to having been part of a smear campaign to discredit [...]

Acquainted with the Night

If you have a chance, read David Orr’s superb reckoning with Frederick Seidel’s poetry in today’s NYTBR. I’m still struggling with the rhyme “china vagina.” But, hey, that’s just me. Though I was happily reminded of a guy in my grad school workshop who rhymed Milton Berle with squirrel.

FAQ-Are Multiple Submissions Kosher?

N.P. from the great state of Long Island asks if it’s okay to make multiple submissions when you are querying agents. In a word: yes. Do you have to tell the agents? In a word: not really. Some writers will divulge that the project is with others. I see this as a courtesy, not a necessity. What if two [...]

I Want To Know What Love Is

Maybe I’m elevating, but NYC, my giant ashtray, looked so beautiful this morning on my walk to work. I take the same route every day, but today everything is in high relief: a 9/11 sky, the baked red bricks of a crumbling building, a beautiful woman whose left cheek twitched as if the cricket from Times Square [...]

Dismissed!

First of all, I didn’t get picked for jury duty. Didn’t even get to the voir dire stage of the selection process. Painful flashbacks of camp socials watching everyone pair off to Color My World. Next: what people are reading? Mostly the New Haven Register, USA Today, and the NY Post and Daily News. No [...]

Grab a Shovel

  Tomorrow:  jury duty. The last time I was on jury duty, everyone was reading the same book. Everywhere I turned I saw a black dust jacket with the red thumb print.  It was 1987 and, of course, the book was Presumed Innocent. Tomorrow, I will report back on what they’re reading at the courthouse now, in [...]

Turd by Turd

Here are some tips I was going to include in The Forest for the Trees until my editor reminded me I was not Anne Lamott. (Funny, in graduate school a professor told me I was not Fran Leibowitz. That BDP I mentioned earlier told me I wasn’t Woody Allen.)  Who the fuck am I? Anyway, [...]