A few nights ago, we watched the first episode of Homeland (we binge watch, which, according to a recent Netflix poll, is how 76 percent of viewers…
I was talking to the great Trinidad-Tobago novelist Earl Lovelace a few weeks ago (if I can’t drop a name or two in my own…
My essay, “So Much Jazz,” about the inspiration for the musical elements in Emancipation Day, has been posted on Retreat by Random House. To read it,…
It’s not always possible to pinpoint the exact moment when a book is conceived, when the germ of a discovery meets the seed of an…
I have written fourteen books of nonfiction, and now I have written a novel, and recently I was asked to compare the two experiences. What…
“But dead people persist in the minds of the living.” –Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead. My current work-in-progress rebelled after about ten drafts. It…
I’ve been invited to take part in La Sombra del Sabino, a Canadian literary festival that takes place in Tepotzlan, Mexico, next month (February 22-25).…
We learn in Tom Wolfe’s recent novel, Back to Blood, that in Miami, Florida, white Americans refer to Cuban immigrants derogatorily as “Canadians.” As a…