Here is a radical truth: school doesn’t have a monopoly on learning. More and more people are declining traditional education and college degrees. Instead they’re getting the knowledge, training, and inspiration they need outside of the classroom.
The Kickstarter campaign is over–and wow! Over 1500 copies are going out as rewards when the book is done later this year.
If you missed the Kickstarter but still want to get a copy, give me your name and email here, and I’ll let you know when it’s ready for purchase.
Many thanks to all the backers and to the Kickstarter community team for giving the project so much love.
I’m putting together a handbook for independent learning called Don’t Go Back to School, and funding it on Kickstarter. I’d be so grateful for your support. Please check it out and spread the word.
I’ll be reading at KGB Bar this Sunday at 7PM, with Lynne Tillman and others from Red Lemonade.
My publisher, Red Lemonade is throwing a book party for Follow Me Down–everyone’s invited! Words, special Red Lemonade fizzys, and music.
Tuesday Sept 6
7PM
The Bell House
149 7th Street, Brooklyn
I’ll also be reading at Sunny’s in Red Hook on Sept 11, at 3PM.
My novel Follow Me Down
I now have a person page on Facebook for book-related news. Go there to check out the time-lapse video of Ian Crowther shooting the cover photo for Follow Me Down. You can use the Like button for the page if you want to get updates in your stream.
I’m thrilled to say that Follow Me Down has begun to arrive in the mailboxes of people who preordered it. Friends have been sending me pictures, which makes me so happy!
It should be in bookstores soon…if you see it, send me a picture and I’ll post it here!
I get the great treat of introducing these two writers whose work I adore, this Wednesday night.
Lynne Tillman & Paula Fox
McNally Jackson bookstore
7pm
52 Prince St b/t Mulberry & Lafayette
Here’s video of a reading I gave from Follow Me Down at the Center for Fiction in New York in April.
The life of the street, at its best, is lyrical, unexpected, and momentarily intimate. Cities by definition comprise strangers, and when strangers find cause to break their urban detachment, the episodes of street intimacy they make can be precious and thrilling. These moments fascinate me, both in my own experience and in the abstract, as what I believe to be a craved pleasure of city dwellers. I’m talking here about the pleasure of interruption, of fleeting connections. These moments are metonyms for why we choose to live in cities. They shimmer with the beauty of the ordinary and everyday. And they’re rich with meaning, as instances of what linguists call “phatic communication,” which is to say, an exchange that has little semantic value but high social and emotional value. When your neighbor says, “How’re you doing?” what they also say is: I know you, I recognize you, we’re in this thing of being humans together.
Municipal Archives
Mythology Club
Félix Fenéon tweets
Don't Go Back to School