Like many of you, I imagine, I was very saddened by today’s announcement of Michael Crichton’s passing away of cancer at age 66. I first encountered Crichton’s books when I was in junior high, and my English teacher told me about Jurassic Park (this would have been in 1993, well before the movie). I found [...]
Fasten your seatbelts, folks: it’s science time. As a writer, I’ve long been familiar with synesthesia as a literary device, but not so much a literal phenomenon. That was before I saw a Discovery Channel documentary on literal synesthesia a few days ago. Simply put, literal synesthesia occurs when the experience of one kind of [...]
For the second year in a row, I am spending time in Daytona Beach, Florida grading the AP English Language exam with around 900 distant friends and colleagues. This year, we’ve got around 300,000 essays to grade (gulp) and about one week to do it. It’s the largest volume of essays AP has ever contended [...]
Continue reading about AP Reading Two: Once More Unto the Beach, Dear Friends
My parents came into town from St. Louis to see the new house this weekend, which went a long way towards making it feel like a completed home. And since, like most residents of Chicago, I view out of town relatives as a handy excuse to do touristy things, we decided to take an architecture [...]
In keeping with my pattern of catching up to trends about six months after they hit their peak, I started a Facebook page yesterday. I’ve already made contact with some people from college and high school that had vanished into the distance long ago, and in the coming weeks will be working to integrate Facebook [...]
There’s nothing fancy about this entry; I just have a handful of fun tidbits to report: A good friend of mine from Sewanee named Matthew Pitt was recently notified that one of his short stories will appear in The Oxford American, which hails from my old state of Arkansas. Even more impressively, a short story [...]
Ah, early September! The time of year where the the leaves change color, Chicago heat becomes slightly less stultifying, and the construction season begins a final push towards completion before the onset of snowfall. It is a time of new beginnings. In my case, the beginnings of two things I have been anticipating eagerly: The [...]
I leave for Sewanee one week from today–and am excited but pleasantly nervous. My bio is now on the website, which is cool, but not nearly as cool as the fact that I can also see the bios of other attendees. Its a decorated group, with publications ranging from Southern Review to Glimmer Train to [...]
The summer has officially begun! At great sacrifice to my internal sense of time (ending term in late June instead of early May is more than a little disorienting) I have now submitted final grades for DePaul and can enjoy a respite from teaching until early September. In the meantime, I actually have time to [...]
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