My writer’s group met last Tuesday, and when we got to talking about editing I brought up a part from my published memoir, Long Time, No See as an example of the value of good editors. It’s been a while since I read that book, so after the meeting I dug up the excerpt to […]

Our flight from O’Hare to Washington, DC was cancelled Friday afternoon, but after re-booking and enduring Two additional flight delays, we finally arrived in DC at midnight. Nine hours in an airport provides a couple with a lot of time to come up with great ideas about housekeeping, budgets, writing, Academy award nominees, work, Facebook, […]

My husband Mike was at the Greenbuild convention in Philadelphia last week. Left with so much time on my own, I started reading The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s new 771-page novel. I had a hard time putting it down, and I wasn’t the only one. In a New York Times book review, Michiko Kakutani says Donna […]

My book club pick was a flop. Maybe because everyone else read it in print, and I got to hear Academy Award winner Rita Moreno read the audio version? When all was said and done, the only member who liked Sonia Sotomayor’s My Beloved World as much as I did was Jamie Ceaser. Always knew […]

Gangs. Drugs. Violence. Poverty. Those were my lingering images of Chicago’s housing projects after they were torn down a decade or so ago. I know a lot more about the history of those projects and the people who lived in them now, though, thanks to my friend Audrey Petty, an Associate Professor of English at […]