At least I think I know. But you will have to wait a bit for erudite me to enlighten you on that, because first you must suffer through an update of my travels. I’m in Gatlinburg, at a beautiful resort perched on the side of a mountain (well, they call them mountains in these parts, […]
Did I mention that the Mayborn was chock full of informative lectures and panels? I know I’ve talked about my fabulous, amazing workshop, and the Oprah Incident, and a few social events here and there. But lest you think that the entire conference was held in the bar, I now present a run-down of a […]
One of the participants in last Friday’s Mayborn book manuscript workshop, Carol Harper, asked me a question via e-mail today. Does courage equal good writing? I love this question because nobody’s ever asked it of me before, and in all the years I’ve been pondering writing and talking about writing, I’ve never heard it discussed. […]
It wasn’t all about Nan Talese and Oprah at the Mayborn last weekend, far from it. While the lectures and panels and discussions and networking comprise the meat of the conference, the side dishes are the workshops. Conducted all day Friday, they follow the standard workshopping procedure of every MFA program in the country. (Actually, […]
The infamous Nan Talese comments about Oprah are now available for your viewing pleasure here. She didn’t even talk for that long, but I guess people don’t usually diss Oprah, hence the whole world is now weighing in, once again, on the brouhaha. Here’s my own personal opinion (I know you were waiting for it). […]
Nan Talese is the best thing that ever happened to the Mayborn Conference. The publicity about her remarks dissing Oprah is all over the place, most notably at the Time magazine website. Head on over there and check it out. You can easily find it because last time I checked, it was the number one […]
I’m in LA after the Mayborn Writer’s Conference and will do a full report on my travels tomorrow. I’m also planning a mini-series about some of the presentations. So check back in! Meanwhile, for a look at some of the controversy that got stirred up (or, as my friend Leigh calls it, the "Oprah smack […]
I’m off to the Mayborn Literary Non-Fiction Conference tomorrow. I wasn’t going to link it, because its sold out, but you never know someone might drop out. The good news is that I’ve finally learned how to spell the name. There’s no "e" on the end of it, duh. I’m taking my trusty laptop and […]
I’m in the middle of critiquing book manuscripts for the Mayborn Conference on Literary Non-fiction (it has some long official name that I can never remember) which is in Dallas weekend after this one. The writer-in-residence and also doer of anything remotely related to the conference, George Getschow, asked me to come up with guidelines […]
One of the best places on the planet is Sun Valley, Idaho. I lived there for a few months years ago, and my daughter recently spent a winter there. More importantly, Ernest Hemingway lived there off and on and it is the place he chose to die. To commemorate Hemingway and honor his time in […]
