Four of our Friday night writers have made the quarterfinals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. You can read and review here:
Mark Goldberg's Walk into the Sun
Karen Kravit's Leaving Folk
Louis Lowy's And the Heavens Shall Part
Neil Crabtree's The Barricades of Heaven
So maybe I'm easy to please, but I loved almost all the food we ate in San Francisco. Our favorite restaurant was The Slanted Door, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Ferry Building. We went twice and had the Niman ranch spareribs with honey-hoisan sauce both times. We also had shaking beef, oysters, chicken stir fry, lamb rack, lamb sausage, caramalized tiger prawns, oven-roasted duck breast, black cod. (There were four off us!) Amazing and the drinks were spectacular, especially the ginger limeade and the Phantasm: lemongrass vodka, lime and falernum.
I had the best Mexican food of my life at Colibri on Geary near Union Square. Fabulous fresh quacamole, mole poblano, carnitas with guajillo and arbol chiles salsa, nopales asados (cactus leaves), and torta de elote, a savory corn bread with bacon and a poblano pepper cream sauce--to die for. Y Margaritas divinos!
Sticking to best ever--at the Zuni Cafeon Market, I had the best gnocchis I've ever eaten! Garlic and ricotta, and based, we learned, on an Elizabeth David recipe. Also had a wonderful bowl of polenta with pamesan and rabbit with braised garlic and mustard mashed potatoes. And a couple of wonderful Bloody Marys.
A-16 on Chestnut in the Marina is worth the wait. Spinach gnocchis not quite as good as Zuni, but delicate and tasty. Cindy and I split a salsiccia pizza whih was great and some squid ink cavatelli with octopus which was the hit of the night. Beer and wine only.
We ate our only breaksfast at Dottie's True Blue Cafe. Six of us waited in line forty-five minutes--people customarily wait for two hours here--and managed to get seated together in this tiny cafe on Jones St. I had eggs and bacon with grilled corn bread and jalapeno jelly. Others were more adventurous and ordered off the specials menu on the wall. Pastries all freshly baked, imaginative frittatas. Cindy had whiskey-fennel sausage and scrambled eggs. Great place.
The only disappointment of the week was at Thomas Keller's Bouchon in Yountville, which we were really looking forward to. The steak frites was far and away the best thing on the menu our waiter said. So three of us got the steak--it was ordinary, undercooked and expensive. And the fries nothing special. Glad we didn't send even more money at Keller's French Laundry.
I also had a drink at Vesuvio's on Jack Kerouac's birthday with my friends Leonard from across the street and Sue from Sacramento, and Sue's friend Jennifer. Went to the oldest San Francisco independent bookstore, Stacy's, where I've read, only to find it empty except for the shelves they were selling--gone out of business! And in Berkeley, Cody's was closed.
FIU now has valet parking for those of you driving right from a South Beach night club to a morning class. (thanks to Joe in Cheese)
Here's a link to this weekend's Literary Feast 2009 in Broward.
Requiem, Mass. won the gold medal in this year's Florida Book Awards. Other winners include my friends David Kirby, Campbell McGrath, and Debra Dean. I'm in exalted company!
If you like newspapers, then this is some bad news. The Herald and the Globe are next? (thanks to Mollie in Austin)
Barbara was in the first class I ever taught at FIU, an Intro to Creative Writing course at our University Park campus. She sat in the thrid seat in the left row and was so smart, I asked her to teach one of the classes--I can't remember what the subject was that morning. Well, she showed up with handouts and a lecture and exercises. Later she got into our MFA program, and I found out she already had a book published and she was an officer in the South Florida Romance Writers Association. She invited me to their annual conference in Hialeah and I went. Barbara was in a memorable fiction workshop with Dennis Lehane one semester. It was thrilling to be in that room with so much talent--an not just those two eventual stars. Barbara left romance for leagl thrillers. Wrote twelve of them, all very successful. After she got her MFA, she called me to have coffee. We met on Hollywood Beach and she said she found out that morning her first novel would be coming out in in paperback. First printing--a million copies. Barbara bought the coffees. She has been in our Friday Night Writers group, was a generous supporter of Gulf Stream literary magazine over the years. Barbara died this week, and I'll miss her. This is a terrible loss for the South Florida writing community. You can find Barbara's books here.
Short fiction by Corey Ginsburg, editor of Gulf Stream, MFA candidate, Friday Night Writer. (click through pages to page 16.)
Saw this photo on my sister's Facebook page. That's little Johnny with his fly opened. And Lefty and Paula.
For reel. The actor who played a steroid dealer in The Wrestler (which should be up for Best Picture) was busted for dealing steroids. For real.
Wednesday's New York Post cartoon.
Rupert "Fox" Murdoch owns this paper, right?
(gracias a Jose en Queso)
The McNuggitini. (thanks to Lisa in Austin)
Off to AWP in Chicago. I'll leave you with another graphic short-short story.
Corn dog pizza! More bad food. I've actually eaten the Garbage Plate at Nick Tahou's in Rochester.
I'll be in good literary company in March.
A graphic short-short story:
