My Lives piece about visiting Jerusalem is in the New York Times Magazine this weekend. A friend and I were beginning that strange dance of making plans to make plans, when I mentioned that I’d be traveling to Jerusalem soon. “We should get together right away,” he joked, “before you come down with Messiah syndrome.” It was the kind of . . .
. Are you trapped in a Muriel Spark novel? I put together some clues for The Toast: You believe you can make insomnia work to your advantage by deciding what to think about. You identify communist intellectuals from the variety of dyspepsia remedies on the bathroom shelf. Such bad luck! You killed the nanny instead of your . . .
Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea may be my favorite of his novels yet. I spoke with him for Barnes and Noble Review. Here’s an excerpt. CRL: Someone asked me, “Is that the difference between a Western hero and an Eastern hero?” MN: What did you say? CRL: Maybe. I don’t know. But the Western heroes we know — in literature, it’s . . .
I wasn’t sure when exactly the announcement became official, which is the reason I held off on posting this here, but I’m excited and delighted to report that my employer, Thomson Reuters, awarded $3000 to Girls Write Now last year, as part of the company’s 2013 “Community Champion” awards, because of my volunteering there. (By day I work in TR’s . . .