Book Expo is a massive event. The floor is crowded with publishers hawking their wares. There’s acres and acres of books. It’s quite an operation really. But whether intentionally or by design, the folks behind the Expo are making it pretty tough to cover this event, especially if you’re a blogger. As Sarah and Ed have mentioned, there is almost no Internet access. Supposedly you can pay $5 an hour for wireless access, or the incredible price of $50 for the day. Everyone is subject to this charge, even those who have press passes. There is a press room (which is where I am right now), but there’s no wireless access there either. Instead there’s three computers with signs posted above them that say “Please limit your time to 15 minutes when others are waiting.” It makes it hard to blog, is all.
Book Expo Dispatch: A Quick Rant
Letters from AWP: Re-Entry Is Hard
In which our correspondent gets home from AWP, exhausted, inspired, and in possession of two new tote bags.
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Letters from AWP: The Writer’s Life in Portland
In which our correspondent make his yearly jet-lagged pilgrimage to the beating heart of America’s literary community.
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Working with What You’ve Got: An Interview with Lydia Kiesling
My children don’t make me miserable—the way American society fails parents of every background is much more immiserating.
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Dispatches from Nicosia: Birds, Cats, and the Cyprus Talks
I am here to research, among other questions, the poet C.P. Cavafy. The entire enterprise bears an imprint of ridiculousness the poet himself might have appreciated.
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Death and the Poet: Inside the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast
Abby was murdered in the morning while Andrew was out of the house, a fact established by forensic examination of the couple’s stomach contents. He came home a few hours later, sat down on the sofa in the sitting room and was killed, never knowing his wife’s body was cooling upstairs on the guest room floor.
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My Pilgrimage to the House of Brontë
To live in Haworth during Charlotte Brontë's time would have made anyone from the 21st century chronically nauseated.
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That Was Us: An Expat’s Search for Home
To be an expat is to always feel slightly on the fringe of things. It is to perpetually be a little lost, to live with the nagging feeling that your life is happening elsewhere. It is to no longer really belong anywhere; to lose the ability to say, with total assuredness, This is my home.
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