Category Archives: writing

Present!

I don’t think I can come up with all the work I’ve done since February. Recently, I’ve reviewed for the LA Times: The Kid by Sapphire, Bright’s Passage by Josh…

My bookish life

Last week The Paris Review posted my Culture Diary on their blog — parts one and two — which proves that as an LA-based bookish reporter I sometimes get up…

A new writing class

I’ll be teaching a new creative nonfiction class — memoir, essay — with Writing Workshops Los Angeles. It will start on June 1, and run for 8 weeks. It’s shaping…

Talking to Rebecca Skloot

I met Rebecca Skloot in New York last fall, when after a National Book Critics Circle event I had little business attending, I tagged along with a group of former…

Zombies and Fante

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of John Fante’s birth, and I wrote an article for the LA Times about how his work — particularly “Ask the Dust”– has survived. I…

State by State in the LA Times

“State by State” is an amazing anthology in which 50 contemporary writers take on our 50 states; I write about it in Friday’s LA Times. For the article, I talked…