John Baker’s Blog

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 [...]

A panel at the PEN World Voices session came up with the following titles:
Antonio Muñoz Molina: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Catherine Millet: The Lily of the Valley by Honoré de Balzac
Yousef al-Mohaimeed: first the Arabian Nights, then poetry (including haikus), and then, of all things Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek
Olivier Rolin: Under the Volcano by [...]

Mario Balzic is the Police Chief of Rocksburg, a town in Pennsylvania where the mills have closed and the mines shut down. In this 1974 novel, as in other novels in the series, the Chief lives with his wife Ruth, their two daughters, and Balzic’s elderly mother.
It had taken years for the hedges to [...]

American poet, Gary Snyder was recently awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize - a $100,000 lifetime achievement award.
This is one of his poems:
For a Stone Girl at Sanchi
half asleep on the cold grass
night rain flicking the maples
under a black bowl upside-down
on a flat land
[...]