John Baker’s Blog

Persepolis directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, is an animation with the voices of Catherine Deneuve, Sean Penn, Chiara Mastroianni, Iggy Pop.
It’s an expressionistic piece, minimally drawn in black and white, featuring the life of a young Iranian girl. On one level a coming-of-age story, it is outspokenly political, showing the hopes of everyday [...]

This from PEN World Voices: Rushdie, Eco, and Vargas Llosa by Dorothy W. at Metaxu Cafe:
Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see [...]

This piece by geoff on Metaxu Cafe, reports on the PEN World Voices Festival: The Secret Lives of Cities panel, which brought together authors whose work has focussed on a particular city: Juan de Recacoechea on La Paz, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed on Riyadh, Francisco Goldman on Guatemala City, and Joshua Furst on Minneapolis.
One of Goldman’s riffs [...]

The Guardian reports on the honourable dealings of the much loved supermarket chain:
Writers criticise Tesco for ‘chilling’ Thai libel actions
· Leading authors sign letter to retailer’s chief executive
· Supermarket chain urged to uphold human rights
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Jacob Russell looks at beginnings:
I wanted to begin with opening paragraphs rather than sentences, precisely to get past the “hook” –the [...]