It's nice to think back about Kenya now, as an extreme cold warning has just been issued in completely snow-bound Montreal. concordia.ca/news/stories/2…

Another one-sentence story. Shostakovich and Montreal Metro and university department meetings and a night on the Abkhazian seashore and... all the rest of it. SENTENCE: WALTZ No. 2 dooneyscafe.com/sentence-waltz… via @DooneysCafe

See how happy I am in this photo taken in Kenya with International Literary Seminars last December? So when Mikhail Iossel recently contacted me about helping with the next ILS program, I was delighted! internationalliteraryseminars.org/about

Another day, another sentence. SENTENCE: LIFE HAPPENED dooneyscafe.com/sentence-life-… via @DooneysCafe

Episode 3 of How I Wrote This the Podcast is now available. This one features Mikhail Iossel, winner of the 2021 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction! Listen now: howiwrotethisthepodcast.com/episodes/inter…

And so it begins again: yet another academic year. My twentieth year at Concordia. My thirty-third year of university teaching. A small army of young writers have passed through my classrooms. Life goes on: what other choice does it have?

"What is the self? Everything you are, without others, without friends or strangers or lovers or children or streets to walk or food to eat or mirrors in which to see yourself. But are you anyone without others?” --Don DeLillo, Zero K

Coming into the world next Spring/Summer.

The Pale Blue Dot. Our group photo. Taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun.

"Everything must be permitted for artists but the silencing of their fellows," writes Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson in The Times today, in a piece titled "Political boycotting of the arts paints a picture of tyranny." To me, for one, this feels like the old Soviet Union.

I was born under totalitarianism and spent the first 30 years of my life in a totalitarian society. It's no place for one to remain unbroken for too long. Believe me when I say, a bit simplistic as it may sound: freedom is better, no matter what. It's as uncomplicated as that.

I will endeavor to faithfully and steadfastly promote and represent the interests of Kenyan literature in North America.

youtube.com/watch?v=G-2Rvq…

An Advance Review Copy. My first book to be published in Canada. Publication date: August 1.

The Trump administration has effected a revolution in foreign policy. Every country will consider how to wean itself off dependence on the United States. The Post-American World is now in plain sight. My take:

Canada’s new PM Mark Carney: “Canada never ever will be part of America in any way, shape, or form. We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.” He’s not fucking around!

Cascades of Ph(r)ases and C(l)auses: Sentence by Mikhail Iossel A remarkable first review. Grateful and kind of awed. The reviewer totally got what SENTENCE was up to. And one could do much worse than being compared to Joyce. theseaboardreview.ca/p/cascades-of-…