Reading in Brookline

Reading with January Gill O’Neil
Brookline Booksmith
Brookline, Mass.
Tuesday, March 2
7pm


I hope the snow stops by Monday so I can fly to Boston (and back). I am so looking forward to meeting and reading with the amazing January Gill O'Neil.

All of us collect fortunes when we are children--a fortune of colors, of lights and darkness, of movements, of tensions. Some of us have the fantastic chance to go back to this fortune when grown up.

Ingmar Bergman quoted in Time December, 1980

Sometimes, at the end of a long day of writing, I feel so tired and so achy, and yet so lucky. Lucky to have had a long day of writing with few interruptions. Lucky, lucky, lucky to be able to say, I was there in the middle of so much of what Bergman calls my fortunes that I have collected and recollected so many times.

Stories to Read

I've become addicted to short stories lately. This morning I was blown away by two stories, "The Thing Around Your Neck," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And "How to Date a Brown Girl, Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie" by Junot Diaz.

Snow Deer

It's been snowing nonstop. Just outside our porch two deer have made a nest in the snow. I can just see their heads over the two plus feet of snow. When the dogs go out, they turn and stare at us sleepily, as if to say, Please don't bother us. We're comfortable here.

The Lottery

This morning I was listening to a New Yorker podcast of Shirley Jackson's famous story, "The Lottery." What I didn't know was that this story angered many subscribers to the magazine. Many readers cancelled their subscriptions and wrote angry letters.

Funny, I can't imagine a story causing so much excitement today.