Down Time

It’s kids-home-from-school, Christmas-and-birthday, double strep-throat week in my house. Blogging went out with the wrappings…for now. Meanwhile, some bits and pieces. See you in January, reporting when I can from my 12-day, MFA on-site residency program (if I’m not too worn down from those workshop critiques!).

►Readers who have dropped by often know all about the NonFiction Now conference. Now, all the seminars and presentations are available for audio listening. Instructions are nonexistent over on the site, but I found that one needs to scroll through the conference schedule and click on the panel’s title to start the audio; just be prepared for some rustling papers.

►Yes, book review sections are shrinking, disappearing, being merged into other sections, and having their one-time dedicated editors assigned double duties, at major and minor newspaper markets across the country. This is bad, no doubt. But it’s also not exactly new, according to this piece in the Columbia Journalism Review.

►Then, in case anyone wondered, here’s what members of the National Book Critics Circle have to say on ethics in book reviewing. Like, is it ever okay to review a book one has not read? Review a book for which one has provided a blurb? Hmm…

►It’s not often one is published in the New York Times, and I’m humbled it happened twice for me in 2007. Here’s my latest essay.