(This list is amended at whim: maybe hourly, possibly annually.)
1. While spending time in Berlin, I fell hard for an English-language bookstore (owned by Czechs) where they boil/bake their own bagels. Here’s their back room:
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2. If I could live in any museum, it’d be the Dia:Beacon.
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3. If you ask me what to read these days, I’ll probably send you toward Marlon James or Stacey D’Erasmo.
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4. I’ve been known make the students in my fiction workshop read Sven Birkerts’s Reading in a Digital Age.
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5. Here’s my Sharpie-inscribed copy of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green:
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6. See the pic on this site’s “Contact” page? That’s my bamboo keyboard.
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7. Here I am standing in front of Mont Blanc’s peak. I’m smiling because they serve coffee up there:
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8. I get to hang out in the Alps because my husband runs the Mt Blanc Summer Writing Workshops. I can’t recommend this program highly enough. And not just because the cheese is so good (but really, the cheese is so good).
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9. If you’re interested in what it’s like to write long-form fiction, don’t miss Alexander Chee’s 100 Things About a Novel.
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10. When it comes to on-screen pairings, my vote will always go to Jack and Sissy (Missing, 1982):
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12. As for my Trader Joe’s addiction, I’m working on it.
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13. Britpop.
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14. Finally, I think often about gender in publishing. IE, perceptions of women’s works in the contemporary literary landscape. My thoughts don’t directly align with those of Jennifer Weiner (I’ve never met her) or of Mr. Franzen (though I’ve come to his defense in the past). And yet, you won’t find my take on this subject here. It’s long and weighty and in my head.
