Monthly Archives: March 2009

In August, 1998, I was in Dublin at a writing workshop. A buddy of mine invited me to Belfast for the weekend; I took the train up, and we went to the beach for a wind-battered hike, and then to a pub for drinks. She… Read more

You know those studies of scent where they’ve found that inbred mice don’t have as powerful a smell as genetically healthy mice, and females are drawn to males with more powerful smells, and the implication of this is that scent draws animals to one another… Read more

Rick Bass had to persuade me that one could be an environmentalist and a hunter. His writing is personal, thoughtful, and keenly outsider. He’s a transplant to the region he loves—and his essays in “The Book of Yaak” have a yearning that is curiously painful.… Read more

Even as an undergrad, I came to despise coming-of-age stories. In any given workshop, at least half the stories would have this sort of nostalgic portrait of restless ineptitude, and the characters would inevitably discover themselves writers, and the stories would trail away into ellipses.… Read more

Maybe having watched Lady & the Tramp, you’re predisposed to be troubled by the pound, by the worrying bled-out term “Humane Society” — or maybe it’s the visit itself and all the dejected, barking dogs placed in isolated cells. Maybe the word “cell” popping into… Read more