Benjamin Johncock
My desktop: TC Boyle
When I’m on tour, circling in the endless holding pattern or slouched in some moulded plastic seat in a cacophonous airport waiting room after having my genitals prodded by a friendly TSA employee, I make use of a book or two, but I do not carry a laptop or Kindle because these things make for excess baggage. I am a road warrior, strutting proudly round the world on two bony legs, a garment bag slung over one shoulder, a personal effects bag over the other. Electronic communication can wait for my arrival in a sterile hotel room.
MIEL Retreat Scholarships
In November, MIEL will host a writing retreat in the Flemish countryside. Since some people may find the cost prohibitive, we’re raising funds for scholarships.We’re aiming to provide travel grants and funded retreats for writers who would otherwise be financially unable to take time away to write. We have five days left to go & we’re going to need a lot of help getting there.
”[…] which we took to mean that a letter sent is a letter sent and not an obligation to reply placed weightily on the recipient, which we further take to mean that letters should stop including “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to reply” in the first paragraph, on twitter yesterday. It made our day.”
(via theletterspage)
Can the same be applied to email, please?
(via eireannmor)
Evie Wyld: My desktop
Evie Wyld, one of Granta’s best young British novelists, explains why she shares her Writers’ Desktop with a grunting koala and a salted hen.
“I don’t really bond with inanimate objects.”
AL Kennedy shows me her Writers’ Desktop for Guardian Books.
'I’d get online...and my reading time for the night would have been pissed away'
Writers’ Desktops:
George Saunders talks to me about his computer desktop for Guardian Books.
That’s George Saunders, recently named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, yeah?
His latest book, Tenth of December, was THE BEST BOOK I READ LAST YEAR: http://t.co/sqcVICeXj5
(You should probably read it immediately.)
I’ve found the perfect hairdresser…
This is me on the way home whenever I finish writing a chapter.
'We deplete the pretension from our favourite art form (books) using our second-favorite art form (comedy)'
Literary Death Match in a nutshell.
Here’s Adrian Todd Zuniga talking about the TV pilot.
Thinking about buying an iPad?
I probably wouldn’t at the moment. Wait til April. You may well see the iPad 5 then. (Although, after having lived with it for a few weeks, I would buy an iPad Mini over the iPad any day of the week.)
Krechet-94. The russian suit that was going to be used to walk on the moon
What is interesting about this suit is that, if the Cosmonaut fell on the moon, he would not be able to get up because of its bulkiness. And since the LK lander would have allowed only a single individual to land on the surface, this could pose a particularly deadly problem. To solve it, the Soviets designed a structure very similar to what is seem here that the Cosmonaut would “wear” around him. In the event he did fall over, he simply had to roll himself over to hoist himself up again, similar to how a turtle is self-righting.
I love this. It looks like an elderly astronaut.
The Letters Page: There must be a better way of keeping this Call for Submissions at the top of the page, but until we find out what it is...
Dear You,
When was the last time you wrote a letter, by hand, and sent it away in the post? And when did you last receive a handwritten letter? Do you ever miss those personal correspondences?
The Letters Page is a new literary journal which uses letter writing as theme and form. We’re…
Coffee.
My book of 2012
There is a point in every George Saunders story when the scene he has meticulously created springs a leak, an anomaly just visible in the corner of the eye, and a sign of the terror about to rain down.
Oh yeah.
