A Father, a Daughter, a Pony, and a Lesson in Dreams
A Father, a Daughter, a Pony, and a Lesson in Dreams In my novel, Alice Bliss, Alice’s primary relationship in the family is with her father, Matt. They are kindred spirits; their connection encompasses camping, gardening, swimming, hiking, and playing catch. They are knit together by shared activity, hard work, and play. Unlike Alice, I did not often choose to hang out with my father. The things my father loved to do – golfing, gardening, reading history, watching baseball – required a level of patience I didn’t possess. I worked beside him in the garden grudgingly, I ventured on to the golf course or the driving range once, maybe twice, embarrassed at my ineptitude and bored by the entire enterprise. I wince at my snotty twelve-year-old...
Read MoreWriters Read @ Marshall Zeringue: Lyndsay Faye on Alice Bliss
This is a wonderful post by Lyndsay Faye for Marshall Zeringue’s blog: Writers Read: Lyndsay Faye is the author of critically acclaimed Dust and Shadow, and is featured in Best American Mystery Stories 2010. Faye, a true New Yorker in the sense that she was born elsewhere, lives in Manhattan with her husband. Her new novel is The Gods of Gotham. Recently I asked Faye what she was reading. Her reply: I’m in the middle of some really wonderful books just now I’ll get to in a second, but first of all I recently finished The School of Night by Louis Bayard. I love, love, love his novels, and his newest is fantastic. It’s a mystery that spans multiple centuries and narratives, focusing on the mysterious brotherhood of Elizabethan scientists and free...
Read MoreThe Hidden Costs of War
I’ve written about war for much of my career: from the warrior saint, Joan of Arc to Napoleon in exile on St Helena, from the destruction of the library in Louvain, Belgium in the first days of WWI, to four very young survivors encountering each other in the last days of the Civil War. I’ve even written a comedy about Civil War re-enactors who get their fondest wish and fall through a hole in time. War has been a concern, a passion, and a preoccupation as I’ve tried, again and again to answer the very simple question: why? I grew up when the general populace still paid attention to the war we were fighting, and I vividly remember my parents’ stories of their sacrifices during WW II. I think of how different our lives would be if we were all asked to...
Read MorePure genius. No hubris. What a combination.
6 Writing Tips From John Steinbeck MAR 12 2012, 1:48 PM ET 4 The legendary author explains why you should abandon all hope of finishing your novel. If this is indeed the year of reading more and writing better, we’ve been right on course with David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, and various invaluable advice from other great writers. Now comes John Steinbeck—Pulitzer Prize-winner, Nobel laureate, love guru—with six tips on writing, culled from his altogether excellent interview it the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review. 1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are...
Read MoreReading and Discussion of Alice Bliss at Glen Urquhart School
Reading and Discussion of “Alice Bliss” by Laura Harrington: April 4, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. POSTED BY: Lisa Kent Reading and Discussion of Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington April 4, 2012, 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. Nance Assembly Room Refreshments available in support of Rancho Santa Fe, Honduras We are very pleased to welcome Laura Harrington, Gloucester author and former GUS parent (Kate Harrington-Rosen ’04), to read from and discuss her novel Alice Bliss, and we invite all parents in the GUS community to attend. Also, we believe the novel presents a singular sharing opportunity for our upper school parents and their teens, so we invite interested 7th and 8th grade students to read the book and join the discussion. In Alice Bliss, Harrington treats with insight and...
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