It’s probably one of the better things in life — right up there with creative breakthroughs and lasting love and the slurp of streetside oysters — to have one’s hat tipped to new and great authors. In my case, it doesn’t happen often, because I’m finicky and discriminating with my own tastes, or as others have said, snotty. Some of my closest friends, in fact, have sworn never again to share enthusiasm of their own discoveries, for fear of my response. I’m not proud of this….

More Canadian Short Fiction? You damned well bet– just check the calendar. On that note, I’m starting to think Carol Shields herself is somewhat of a miracle. For starters, look at this, from an interview on Canada as a landscape for writers:
“We’re not big on heroes, either. The concept of heroes is alien. [...]

Canadian Short Fiction Month continues, as promised, with a story that seems obviously designed to be delivered from the lips straight to the ears. There’s so much beauty tucked away in here of the sort you wouldn’t necessarily see on the page, unless you read to yourself with one of the voices in your [...]

If you’re reading this before listening to the podcast… and you know, I have no idea whether you read or listen first, or if you just read, or just listen, and find yourself lost on those rare occurrences where I can hold a thought long enough to prattle BOTH orally and epistolarily about it… but [...]

In general, I don’t like to use these few pre-sound-bytes of Web page space to be topical for reasons that I hope are obvious (I’m not here to depress you), but I can’t help but make note of the talking chimps who’ve gabbed their way back to the news. Now, there are plenty of questions here for an autodidactic but still dilettantish (honestly pedestrian) linguist who moonlights as podcastresse–

So sport seems to be in the air these days. There’s something going on tonight involving hundreds of pounds of helmets and costumery, complete with grandiose spectacle and and pretend warriors, and I’m told this has nothing to do with Wagner. We’ll see. And the Internet tells me the Olympics are coming up soon, though I thought we just finished with one of them? And let us not forget a tiny little event called the World Cup…