Summer solstice
Hi everyone:
Welcome and thanks for stopping by.
It’s quite interesting looking through the traffic data for this site to see where people are coming from and what you are all reading. While I’m not surprised by what gets read and what does not, I am surprised by where the traffic comes from, literally all around the world. Certainly the articles on art and technlogy are of interest to a great many people, but so is my little manifesto on teaching creative writing. And why so many readers from South America?
I’ve not posted much new work because I am doing a ton of research for the novel, which I am trying to finish by the end of the year. And alas, summer is here, so there are many things to distract me. But when you live in the snowbelt, you treasure each day over 60 degrees and it gets harder to remain chained to the laptop.
Stay well,
p.
The Coffin Path
Part travelogue, part literary history, part memoir, this essay offers a glimpse into the power of literature and nature to heal the human body and soothe the human spirit. This piece is still in the works, but I wanted to post it for all those who have asked for it.
Harlem jazz club: 1988
Thou Shall Have Balance: The Ten Commandments of Teaching Creative Writing
With so many writers seeking the mfa credential, I wanted to take a look at how teachers and writing programs might balance the needs of so many within the demands of a professional program. Is it wrong to encourage those who clearly will have a difficult time achieveing any success? Is there a place in the $25,000 workshop for “writing for its own sake?” In giving this some thought, I realized that in my workshops, only careful attention to balance will reconcile my goals with those of my students.
Technology for Art’s Sake
While covering a supercomputing conference in San Jose, California, I stumbled upon an exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art that I found infinitely more interesting than supercomputers. Sure enough, two stories came of it that began to change the course of my career, though I’ve never revisited the subjects again. I’m grateful to the editorial staff at IEEE Spectrum for humoring me in my discovery; it certainly wasn’t what they bargained for!