January 21, 2008 -- Monday afternoon -- MLK Day

At Ritual Coffee Roasters, where the line stretches out the door....and into the rain. All the cafes were full-up. Gloomy holidays call for caffeine.

Reading Demian, by Hermann Hesse. She’s in a Herman Hesse phase and just finished Siddhartha. Next up? It’ll depend on what she’s writing, and, also, what she assigns to her students to read—she teaches creative writing at Mills. The only way to become a good writer, she said, is to read a lot of books. Her students read a book a week.

Her personal favorites—she doesn’t really have favorites, but, Faulkner and Dostoevsky come to mind.

Check out her website, www.michelinemarcom.com. It celebrates writing….and, this is hard to describe without looking at the site, scribbling!--it's neat.

From her Litquake bio:
Micheline Aharonian Marcom is author of Three Apples Fell from Heaven, a New York Times Notable Book; and of The Daydreaming Boy, which won the 2005 PEN/USA Award in fiction. Her Draining the Sea is forthcoming in March 2008. Marcom received a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship and 2006 Whiting Writers Award.

Proof that reading makes you a good writer.

Thank you!