"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." — Stephen King
When Due Quach was a new student at Harvard, she didn’t have much to add to her classmates’ conversations about their vacations. She had never been on one. Starting at age eight, she had worked almost every day at her family’s take-out restaurant, which was in a high-crime neighborhood of … Read More
Of course, the waitress was right: these people clearly didn’t have everything they needed. This is familiar territory for fans of Anne Tyler. We count on seeing an “eccentric ecosystem of relatives and neighbors” who aren’t getting the assurances, stability or respect they need. When the New York Times… Read More
I believe that everyone who is contemplating making a living as a writer should read “Nonfiction, an Introduction,” a short essay in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Ann Patchett describes being allowed to write one of ten ideas that she would present to her magazine editors, and … Read More
As an American, I haven’t thought much about the many roles that rivers have played in other parts of the world. In The Danube: A Cultural History, Andrew Beattie argues convincingly that when travelling the Danube, you are taking not just a geographical journey, but a political, linguistic, philosophical, … Read More