Forget “Winter is Coming.” In Novosibirsk, it’s here. The golden leaves that made this past month so gorgeous have peaked and fallen, and street cleaners have already raked them up into sacks and hauled them away. On Wednesday we had our first snow. Granted, it’s not a real Siberian winter yet — we still have … Read more
Need some inspiration? (Or maybe a kick in the pants?) Over at my favorite creative forum, deviantART, there’s a “100 Themes Challenge” going around. As the name suggests, you get a list of 100 themes (I like to think of them as points of departure) that you turn into 100 new creations. I think it was … Read more
“Ett…två…tre…” I sat at the dinner table with a sheet of paper, jotting down Swedish numbers as my grandpa taught me what little he remembered from childhood. On command, I repeated after him, though as a born writer I was more interested in getting it on paper. “Fyra…fem…sex…sju.” He stopped on seven and made me … Read more
To the Barnes & Noble in State College — or really, any Barnes & Noble anywhere. Indie bookshops have great charm, but among the corporate chains, there’s no one like B&N. (Well, literally. There’s practically no one else left in business…) THE BOOKSTORE Windows, wide, stretching the length of this hall, brilliant glass, radiant with … Read more
I set out to find my heart on the mappa mundi — the gold-leaf sheen so sharp, black lettering so blotted, I could only wander the world over, wondering if this or that sheen or this or that blot or this or that missing piece was mine.