Armour Brand Desiccated Thyroid Bottle (c. 1900): The meatpacking empire of Philip Armour and his brilliant scions found a use for every scrap of carcass leftover from production: cheeks and trimmings became sausage; gut, bone and ligament boiled down to gelatin; redder, bloodier entrails were squeezed into cubes of bullion; even bones were burnt to [...]

After experimenting with a new medium (digital video), I remain convinced that writing conveys character and complexity better than any other I’ve encountered thus far (and I’m including CAVE writing in that). But after watching a couple of television series back-to-back on pirate television stations, I think the best plot-writers are probably working in television [...]

Joshua Ferris (of And We Came to the End fame) spoke in class yesterday. He described his reading and writing process and it seemed diametrically opposed to my own. Ferris takes an enormous pad and writes little chunks all over, assembling a narrative from the fragments. Just thinking about writing that way made me uncomfortable [...]

Snarfing pizza bones, nursing my sick Maine Coon who is less wooly and of more pleasant disposition than the above specimen. Even when he has a thermometer crammed inside one of his most sensitive spots. And he had to have his nailed trimmed which means he can’t hold his own against the other two. I’ll [...]

I’m including this because during the application process I couldn’t find a single example of a successful MFA statement, so here’s mine: PERSONAL STATEMENT My literary practice began as a reaction to an alien environment, and at its best retains the defiant posture of exile. I was born in London but dragged through a progression [...]