It’s once again time for a bit of boldly shameless self-promotion. Here’s my flyer for one Saturday afternoon class and three separate Friday lunchtime sessions. If the Raleigh-Chapel Hill area is in reach for you, I hope you’ll consider coming to one or more: I’m offering a new half-day workshop for anyone interested in writing. […] Read More

If you’ve ever felt you wasted time by writing ten pages — or a whole lot more — that didn’t work, take a look at the extravagant generosity of this Zen-type artist and you may feel better. Scott Wade reproduces Old Masters and does his own original work IN DUST on the windows of cars. […] Read More

Don’t miss the dazzling photos of the Menton Lemon Festival on the blog called Imagine from floral designer Kenju. It sounds garish, but it’s not: a house-sized Taj Mahal made of lemons and oranges, a castle, a towering lemon girl, and more. I’d never heard of Menton or its lemon festival. And now I must […] Read More

“Painting into Light” is an art exhibition at Guilford College in Greensboro, a one-man show by my friend George Wingate. Thursday night Bob and I went to the campus to hear the artist talk about his work. George was his intriguingly digressive, imaginative, thoughtful self, before a packed SRO house. I didn’t take notes and […] Read More

A bit of frivolity that I’ve recently found to help my writing: stopping now and then to glance at one of my favorite gossip blogs. Lately while working on revisions on my novel, I’ve found myself fairly frequently taking five-minute breaks to look at Jossip or Gawker, two of my vices. On the face of […] Read More

What’s the best bold action I could take today? That’s the question I just now asked myself. First, not getting into a dither about what constitutes best. Then what? Here’s what it comes to: working on my novel, as I did yesterday and the day before…. Each day briefly unnerving to begin. Sometimes that sensation […] Read More

Someone extremely close to me just had his identity stolen, his email hacked into, and his address list dunned for money. The message that went out to his whole list claimed he was stranded in London and so please wire $4,000 immediately. One good clue: The letter-writer clearly wasn’t entirely at home in English. Then […] Read More

I think it takes a fair amount of the ordinary daily kind of boldness to be or to host a house guest. Not everyone feels that way, I know. (My office partner, for one, is ever keeping visiting actors or musicians or exchange students for weeks and months at a time without even thinking to […] Read More

Saturday night I went to see a one-man play based on the nonfiction book Blood Done Sign My Name, the story of a racial conflict and killing of a young black man in Oxford, NC, back when author Tim Tyson was living there as a young son of a liberal minister. His book, a bestseller […] Read More

I’ve just come back from taking care of my mother for a couple of days after some minor surgery. I was struck once again by the courage required to face the various adventures of aging. Mom’s actually quite sturdy at 86; the stories she tells are what make me aware of the perilous nature of […] Read More