Summer news

Between plane crashes, violence in Israel/Palestine, and surges of anti-Semitism in France, I think the world could use some good news this week. Here's what's new in my life:

Play On Words will be performing at LitCrawl, a special event during San Francisco's weeklong literary festival, LitQuake, on October 18. We could not be more excited and will be revealing our lineup in the coming weeks!

I was thrilled to see A Practical Wedding repost "Grampa and the Book of Wishes" yesterday. APW is a wonderful resource.

I'm also excited to read a few 100-word-stories at San Jose's Flash Fiction Forum on August 13. It makes me so happy to be finding more and more writers that live in my neighborhood!

Ryan is finishing his second week as a fellow at the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. He is one of 35 teachers who were selected to learn the latest approaches to multimedia journalism--as well as methods for passing on this knowledge to their students. He's produced a few great pieces in the last 10 days, and yesterday their group uploaded a video entitled "The Purpose and Value of Scholastic Journalism." It is inspiring.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit Amah--and to share wedding photos (like the one below, taken by Natalie Jenks).

When I spoke with her last week, we were discussing how long it can sometimes take to achieve artistic goals. She ended the call by saying, "But guess what? After almost 92 years, I've finally quit biting my nails!" There's hope for all of us.