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Lost in the Empire City

Immigrants

I sus­pect that there are count­less Amer­i­can fam­i­ly sto­ries akin to this one, the jour­ney to point of depar­ture, the voy­age itself, the arrival, and ear­ly years of tragedy and/or triumph.

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The Oldest Book on My Shelves

It’s not real­ly a sur­prise then, that on my shelves I have a few — very few — books from my child­hood. Read this week’s essay about those books.

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soup

Soup’s On

Last night didn’t start well. It began when my wife and I sat down to a new soup recipe. That soup took two hours to make, but only about thir­ty sec­onds to real­ize, “This is awful.”

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writing

I am working on a new book

“I am work­ing on a new book. It’s so new it has no title, and to be hon­est, I’m not sure what will hap­pen. Cer­tain­ly, no end­ing is in sight.”

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Great Expectations

With the return of school — has always meant the begin­ning of the year for me. Nev­er mind Jan­u­ary One. As far as I am con­cerned, this is the time when the year tru­ly starts.

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Wrapping Up the 2024 Summer Blog Series

This sum­mer, I invit­ed twelve suc­cess­ful writ­ers to com­ment on one of their recent books and to give some advice about writ­ing. For you teach­ers and librar­i­ans and new writ­ers there is enough wealth of insights and ideas to sug­gest a re-read­ing. And using.

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Pedro Martin

Summer Blog Series: Pedro Martin

I come from a huge fam­i­ly. Eleven, plus my grand­fa­ther. So when­ev­er we would get togeth­er to trade sto­ries, there were usu­al­ly twelve sides to every story.

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Janet Wong

Summer Blog Series: Janet Wong

The gen­er­al idea to do a fun­ny book came to me dur­ing a writer’s work­shop. The writ­ers in the room want­ed to know my answer to the ques­tion, “What kinds of books need to be pub­lished nowa­days? What should we be writing?”

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Gordon Korman

Summer Blog Series: Gordon Korman

Let me say this first: I’m not a crim­i­nal. I don’t have a dis­hon­est bone in my body. But I got the idea for Fak­er when I start­ed won­der­ing: What hap­pens when fate forces ordi­nary peo­ple to break the law?

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