Brunch With Authors

You know my show was the shit last night, right?? You need to go to My BTR page and listen to the archived show on Child Rearing!

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One of the bonuses of having attended Fairleigh Dickinson? All of the talented, cool-as-all-hell writers I've had the pleasure of meeting.

My first year in the program, I got to meet Zadie Smith and Nick Laird in England; at one of the Madison, NJ residencies we had a reading from Sigrid Nunez. As an alum, I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' Annual Writer's Conference and met Edwidge Danticat, Walter Mosley and sat through a very humorous panel with Frank McCourt as the speaker.

Stuff like this would have never have happened to me otherwise.

I also made some AWESOME friends, who are really, truly, madly great writers (if you'd have seen us having brunch this past weekend you would have thought we were the latest United Colors of Benetton ad- we are Black, Latina, Caucasian and Indian) and I always enjoy it whenever we can all get together, talk about books we're reading, our craft and the trials and pitfalls and joys and successes that are attached to it.

And we gossip, too, but that's absolutely none of your business, except OH MY GOD I did NOT know that chick had hooked up with you-know-who at Wroxton the year after I went... DAMN I should have gone back... I missed ALL the action!

For me, our get-togethers are a total boost in motivation and inspiration, and I went home all jazzed up and excited about reading and writing again.

Sometimes, you know, I sit back and think about my life and the people I call friends and family and the experiences and opportunities I've had and honestly... I can't find anything real to complain about.



Except for my noisy neighbors... I still reserve the right to complain about them all the live-long day!

*smooches...working towards adding "NYTimes Best-Selling Author" to my name*
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and you can all say you knew me when...