Category: personal

I am back at home after a couple of days in New York, where I met with my editor, my agent, caught up with some good friends, and stopped by Columbia to attend the CJR panel on book reviewing (podcast here.) On the plane over, I read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, which for some reason I had never read before. I’ve said before that writing a novel is like having a religion: you see signs everywhere. I felt like this book came at the right time for me; it’s helped me see how a character’s tortured inner life can be dissected and every feeling, every thought, every impulse recorded. Pretty stunning.

I am in New York for a couple of days, for meetings with my agent and my editor, and to catch up with some friends. On Tuesday night, my friend Mark Sarvas will be taking part in a panel discussion at the Columbia School of Journalism, and I plan on being in the audience. Join us, won’t you? Here are the details:

Panel on the crisis in book reviewing
7 p.m.
Tuesday, September 18
Third-floor lecture hall, Journalism Building
116th and Broadway
The panelists will be Steve Wasserman, Peter Osnos, Elisabeth Sifton, Carlin Romano, and Mark Sarvas.

The moderator for the panel will be CJR’s publisher, Evan Cornog

When I was writing Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, I could not possibly have imagined it would get the reaction it did from readers, or that it would be used in such varied classrooms as post-colonial North African literature and high school English. On Friday, I went to give a reading at Mercy High School, where the entire class of 600 students had read my book for the fall. What surprised me was how much and well the book was integrated into the curriculum. In drama class, students teased out personality traits for each of the main characters in my novel; in literature class, they looked for simile, metaphor, and other figures of speech; in French class, they translated some key quotes from the book; in ceramics class, they looked for Moroccan designs and used them to create artifacts, and they also chose scenes from some of the stories and recreated them in clay. Students were very familiar with the book by the time I came to read from it, and being in that auditorium with so many teenagers was truly one of the most fun experiences I have had on the road.

I am in San Francisco for the day to do a reading at Mercy High School, which has selected my book for a school-wide read. Sorry, no posts today.

I know I must sound like a broken record by now, but posting may be a bit light this week. I need to finish revising the last chapter of my novel before my trip to New York next week, so please bear with me.

I just emerged from a hellish weekend: We opened boxes, set up furniture, shelved books, hung pictures, and all in 95-degree temperatures. It was exhausting. But, it’s done! It’s done! We’ve been enjoying sleeping in our own bed, eating meals served in our own dishes, lounging on our own sofas, and reading the books that piled up while we were gone.