I know the feeling.

Jonna filled the teakettle in the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, looking at her own face, she thought with sudden bitterness that it couldn't go on like this, these short stories that were never finished and just went on and on getting rewritten and discarded and picked up again, all…

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Another IFOA

Every year it feels like the last IFOA (International Festival of Authors) was just two weeks ago. Admittedly, I got an earlier than usual start this year. Yesterday, Teri and I went to a reading and interview with Ben Lerner and Ian McEwan, and it seemed to go by in…

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Brambly.

  • Post category:Writing

In 2005 I had a poetry blog. It's strange for me to think that I wrote poetry, but I did, and I used to post the (mostly unpublished) poems on my blog. That's another thing that's strange to me now. I recently rediscovered the blog thanks to files I'd saved years…

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Revelation.

INTERVIEWER What was going on with your writing then? ISHIGURO At the time, people weren’t talking about books. They were talking about TV plays, fringe theater, cinema, rock music. Then I read Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble. By this time I’d begun reading the big nineteenth-century novels, so it…

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On writing.

  • Post category:Writing

Kali, who writes one of my favourite blogs ever, nominated me to answer some questions about writing. I've read other writers' answers to these questions and enjoyed discovering new perspectives and philosophies about writing, and reading about everyone's projects. I can't promise my own answers to these four questions will be…

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Short piece up at Sundog Lit

I am proud to be participating in The Kissing Booth at Sundog Lit, two weeks of stories, poems, and essays inspired by my friend Leesa Cross-Smith's forthcoming book, Every Kiss a War.  My piece went up yesterday, and I'm thrilled about having my work amongst such great stories and poems and words.…

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IFOA highlights

Another year, another IFOA. (You can read last year's highlights here.) This year was similar to last year in a lot of ways. I went with Teri to some things, we had sushi to eat, it was even raining like last year. Here are the highlights: - Saw Margaret Drabble being…

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The light.

  • Post category:Writing

The light goes so fast. It's dark again before I realize it's happening. A darkening room, a quieting world, the rushing of distant cars the only reliable sound. A bird now and then, to make me feel like it's spring. I've been writing again. Not much, but it's there, and…

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Through the night.

  • Post category:Misc.Writing

Some small sound will wake me - my dog taking a stroll around the apartment, the curtains snapping in the breeze. I used to get frustrated, but now I find a strange ease in it. It's my time to research things I've been thinking about, work out story ideas, make…

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