1. Now THIS is how to start a day! →

    Yoga on the Beach, Key West

  2. Hey, Key West, thanks for coming out and listening last night. And thanks to Jonathan Woods and Jessica Argyle for organizing such a fun and inspiring event.

  3. I’ll be reading from work in progress at 7 p.m. tomorrow, May 16, as part of the monthly Walk on White series, sponsored by The Studios of Key West. Come out to hear poems, flash fiction, and more, as well as to tour the studios of my fellow AIRs, Christina Pettersson, Sasha Wortzel, and Chihiro Amemiya.

    I’ll be reading from work in progress at 7 p.m. tomorrow, May 16, as part of the monthly Walk on White series, sponsored by The Studios of Key West. Come out to hear poems, flash fiction, and more, as well as to tour the studios of my fellow AIRs, Christina Pettersson, Sasha Wortzel, and Chihiro Amemiya.

  4. On the Deck Potluck at The Studios of Key West →

    For those of you in Key West, join us for our On The Deck Potluck next Tuesday, May 8 from 6 to 8 p.m.

  5. Media Alert: Chefs & Local Food Advocates Headed to Washington to Support Food Stamp Nutrition Incentives at Farmers Markets →

    So proud of my man—the genius behind The Kitchen in Wilmington—who is off to D.C. this week to join Wholesome Wave and more than a dozen chefs including Tom Colicchio and José Andrés to encourage lawmakers to support legislation that would provide federally funded nutrition incentives in the farm bill to empower food stamp recipients to buy healthy, locally grown, fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets.

  6. This was the experience of the marathon for me. It was a rare, rare moment when the city seemed truly whole; when people came together—for free—to watch an event, and they cheered the back-of-the-pack plodders as enthusiastically as they did the whippets who led the way. I was so moved by it that I was choked up for most of the twenty-six miles, seeing this crazy display of community and generosity … Beside the fact that it has such an ancient pedigree, the marathon has a special kind of purity. Anyone can do it; anyone can watch it; everyone loves it. I’m sure rural marathons and small-city marathons are great, but the special thing about big-city marathons, like New York and Boston, is that they are occasions when the clashing and whirring of urban life quiets, and everyone stands together to see a bunch of people trying to do something very simple that is also very hard. It’s marvelous.

    — from “Homemade Marathons” by Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

  7. Happy publication week to Lookout’s latest author and true creative force, Ben Miller, whose River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa came out on Tuesday. His memoir in essays is Lookout’s fourth offering and debut nonfiction book. Already it is getting terrific reviews: “Funny and beautifully crafted … Miller’s affecting chronicle reveals the often messy ways that families fall apart and the way that writing acts both as remembrance and redemption.” —Publishers Weekly “What Miller presents is a kind of forgiveness, brave, heroic, and largely uncharted by male writers … he lends empathy and strength to a story that could otherwise be just one of victimhood.” —ForeWord “Few writers have given more compelling voice to their memories of a particular place. The Great American Midwest will never look—or feel—the same.” —Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 “Miller’s imagination is astounding in its breadth and detail, but it is the heart behind the words, the emotion he brings to the smallest moments, that makes me such an admirer of this writer and his work.” —Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief If you live in New York, please come out to KGB on Tuesday, March 19 at 7 to hear Ben read from the book. I got a sneak listen at AWP last week, and I promise you won’t be disappointed. (photo l to r): me, Ben Miller, Anne Pierson Wiese, Beth Staples)

    Happy publication week to Lookout’s latest author and true creative force, Ben Miller, whose River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa came out on Tuesday. His memoir in essays is Lookout’s fourth offering and debut nonfiction book.

    Already it is getting terrific reviews:

    “Funny and beautifully crafted … Miller’s affecting chronicle reveals the often messy ways that families fall apart and the way that writing acts both as remembrance and redemption.”
    —Publishers Weekly

    “What Miller presents is a kind of forgiveness, brave, heroic, and largely uncharted by male writers … he lends empathy and strength to a story that could otherwise be just one of victimhood.” —ForeWord

    “Few writers have given more compelling voice to their memories of a particular place. The Great American Midwest will never look—or feel—the same.”
    —Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920

    “Miller’s imagination is astounding in its breadth and detail, but it is the heart behind the words, the emotion he brings to the smallest moments, that makes me such an admirer of this writer and his work.”
    —Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

    If you live in New York, please come out to KGB on Tuesday, March 19 at 7 to hear Ben read from the book. I got a sneak listen at AWP last week, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

    (photo l to r): me, Ben Miller, Anne Pierson Wiese, Beth Staples)

  8. Lovely to be included in this list of fine literary magazines that feature photography. Amy Stein’s cover for Ecotone’s Brutality issue remains one of my all-time favorites.

    Lovely to be included in this list of fine literary magazines that feature photography. Amy Stein’s cover for Ecotone’s Brutality issue remains one of my all-time favorites.

  9. My students are up to some exceptionally cool things in preparation for AWP in Boston next week. Stop by tables A6/A7 to meet Lookout’s authors, buy a book or subscription to Ecotone, and say hello to UNCW’s terrific students and faculty. Also, don’t miss the Debut Voices of Lookout Books reading, Friday at 1:30, featuring all four award-winning authors: Steve Almond, Ben Miller, Edith Pearlman, and John Rybicki. lookoutbooks: New drafts of the covers for the limited-edition Debut Voices of Lookout Books, featuring the writing of all four Lookout authors. Come check out the final product at AWP!

    My students are up to some exceptionally cool things in preparation for AWP in Boston next week. Stop by tables A6/A7 to meet Lookout’s authors, buy a book or subscription to Ecotone, and say hello to UNCW’s terrific students and faculty.


    Also, don’t miss the Debut Voices of Lookout Books reading, Friday at 1:30, featuring all four award-winning authors: Steve Almond, Ben Miller, Edith Pearlman, and John Rybicki.

    lookoutbooks:

    New drafts of the covers for the limited-edition Debut Voices of Lookout Books, featuring the writing of all four Lookout authors. Come check out the final product at AWP!

  10. If long ago I located an exit—if I am not now soliloquizing beside her—she is with me nevertheless. I have everyone near, echo and profile. Daily I navigate the stormy presences of deep absences. Estrangement has not corrupted love, nor made it less vital, but sharpened the awareness of what is at stake when one loves, what is to be gained and lost, proving again and again how irreplaceable, and elusive, loved ones are.

    — 

    from River Bend Chronicle by Ben Miller (Lookout Books, 2013)

    Good God, world, you really must read this book. Find the complete prologue, “Ghosts of the Mississippi,” on At Length.

  11. I’m a tad behind in posting these but no less proud of my fall 2012 graduate Bookbuilding students, who made this December afternoon especially fun and meaningful. Thanks to Projekte downtown for hosting presentation day, as well as a screening of Helvetica earlier in the semester.

    Bookbuilding Fall 12Bookbuilding Fall 12Bookbuilding Fall 12

    I’m a tad behind in posting these but no less proud of my fall 2012 graduate Bookbuilding students, who made this December afternoon especially fun and meaningful. Thanks to Projekte downtown for hosting presentation day, as well as a screening of Helvetica earlier in the semester.

  12. I can look back at the way I thought and felt even as a little kid and there was a lot of wonder there, and openness to the many sides of life—the way that beauty and ugliness co-present, for example, or the way that tragedy might be enshrouded in something really funny, or vice versa—and I feel like I’ve only barely scratched the surface so far in what I’ve been able to write.

    — George Saunders in a terrific Slate interview with his Random House editor, Andy Ward

  13. Please, Santa?

    Please, Santa?

  14. Best wishes for a Shiny Brite holiday!

    Best wishes for a Shiny Brite holiday!