Our Republican Governor has decided that off shore drilling is imperative. Here's Connie May Fowler's response. (Scrool down a bit.) How about spending money on alternative energy, on mass transit instead of more of the same short-sighted and ultimately doomed enterprise?
Grim Natwick on animation design.
A story about To Live and Die in Dixie in today's Grand Rapids Press. (Thanks to John in Grand Rapids)
A New York Times review of Preston Allen's new novel. Preston's an FIU MFA alum and a former Friday Night Writer.
The Book Page advance review is a rave.
For your listening pleasure. Ry Cooder on electric bottleneck mandolin.
A short story by Steve Street. (The Corpse spells "Chekhov" incorrectly, not Steve!)
. . . writes about rock 'n' roll and race. And calls Alan Price a genius--something I've believed since "House of the Rising Son."
I've got a lot of eating and reading to do.
Our pal Mitch Alderman has a new sotry in this month's Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. But you'll have to buy it on the newsstands to read it. Mitch is an FIU MFA and is now living in Wyoming.
Lake Superior Stae University's Banished Words for 2008.
The summer issue of Verbsap features two of our Friday Nght Writers: Tom Lassiter ("Lawns count, take mine, a beautiful carpet of St. Augustine, kinda an oasis in this damn crazy world. And it is crazy, right?") and Neil Crabtree ("For a moment, I regretted what I’d said. Her face twitched around the eyes and she looked away, blinking, like someone awakened from a faint with smelling salts under her nose.")
A new Nabokov story in the New Yorker. "On the stairs Natasha ran into her neighbor from across the hall, Baron Wolfe. He was somewhat laboriously ascending the bare wooden steps, caressing the bannister with his hand and whistling softly through his teeth."
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBAJXyF1HVc] (thanks to Kevin in Wormtown)
My review of Andre Dubus III's new novel in Sunday's Globe.
Hurricane Season starts today. And already Tropical Storm Arthur has come and gone.
America has lost a great man of letters. 
George Garrett was as generous a man as I've ever met. A couple of years ago, I e-mailed him for advice about a contest I was judging. His eyesight was by then so bad he couldn't read much on the computer. He sent me a long letter in response in his big script. I felt terrible I had intruded. And he was funny and charming. He could have done stand-up, and sometimes he did. I'll miss him. Here's an interview with Archipelago. George taught at FIU for a year before I was here and came as a visiting writer. He was also on the staff of our writing conference one year. Here's aVQR remembrance with links to essays about George. (thanks to Ran in Charlottesville) Three poems by George Garrett.
