In Person

November 8, 2010

Among the Precocious 45,000: Meet Some of the Thousands of Kids Doing NaNoWriMo 11

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45,000 kids are writing novels for National Novel Writing Month. Thing is, the youngest of these literary hopefuls are still learning to read.

November 3, 2010

Marfa: Donald Judd’s Melancholy Monument 1

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Judd is an artist who deserves our attention, but the degree of cultural canonization and institutional validation that has been conferred on his work at Marfa is commensurate with the very highest levels of achievement.  Who decided that Judd’s legacy is that important?

October 29, 2010

Report from the Future of Reading: The Books in Browsers Conference 8

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It’s only through seizing the social reading moment, so to speak, that the publishers can hope to wrestle some measure of control back from the tech companies that have come to dominate their industry.

September 28, 2010

Scattered Out Over the Land: A Southern Hamlet Crawling with Writers 8

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Greensboro, North Carolina, is that true American anomaly – a place where there seem to be more people writing serious books than reading them.

August 25, 2010

A Novel in Three Days 11

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Seventy-two hours to produce a novel? The International 3-Day Novel Contest proves that writing can be an extreme sport.

June 24, 2010

Report from Paris: Kicking around at the Shakespeare and Company Festival 5

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The theme of the festival was “Storytelling and Politics,” and over three days, 6,000 people gathered in a tent in a small park across the river from Notre Dame to hear writers talk through the relationship between the storyteller and his political context. But the World Cup was on everyone’s mind.