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The Pimps of Menlo Park

The Pimps of Menlo Park

Facehooker, that’s what Lidia Yuknavitch said at a writer’s conference here in D.C. last year.

It took me a second to get the joke–that we’re the ones selling the most precious bits of ourselves to the pimps of Menlo Park, California.

It’s a bad trade, and after nine years, I’m out. We’ll see if life gets worse, or better, or stays pretty much the same.

I’m looking forward to calling friends…

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Does "30 Rock" Jack Speak for All of Us?

Does “30 Rock” Jack Speak for All of Us?

  Alec Baldwin photo by Gage Skidmore Tracy Morgan photo by David Shankbone A manic Tracy Jordan’s holding a loaded gun on the roof of NBC headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Jack Donaghe is trying to talk him down. But Or is he really talking about the might-have-beens and missed chances that nearly destroyed the film career of the great Alec Baldwin? “Tracy, you wanna destroy the goodwill you…

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Russia's Navalny: Taking state-owned assets private won't solve corruption

Russia’s Navalny: Taking state-owned assets private won’t solve corruption

Alexei Navalny at the U.S.-Russia Business Council’s 19th annual meeting on October 4, 2011. Privatization is back on the front burner in Russia since President Dimity Medvedev’s approval of a plan requiring the government to sell off many of its ownership stakes in Russian businesses by 2017. But firebrand Moscow attorney, investors’-rights activist and political blogger Alexei Navalny…

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AWP17 puts literature on the map in D.C

AWP17 puts literature on the map in D.C

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Still sifting through the trove of literary treasures and takeaways from the nation’s largest annual gathering of the literati, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, hashtag #AWP17

Herewith a few visual highlights:

A discussion of the grim realities of getting your novel made into a movie. Panelists: Fobbitauthor David Abrams. Jennifer Lawrence stars in the upcoming…

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Royko vs. Robinson's Ribs

Royko vs. Robinson’s Ribs

A reflection of an editor in Robinson’s Oak Park storefront.

The excitement of this year’s annual gathering of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (#AWP17) in Washington, DC, took me back to the first book I edited — The Charlie Robinson Story: From the Son of a Mississippi Delta Sharecropper to the Top of the Chicago Barbecue Charts.

Charlie Robinson

OAK PARK, ILLINOIS— Chicago’s…

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The Art of the Book Cover

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The Jungles of Tiritipa: A Novel

The Jungles of Tiritipa: A Novel

book-cover

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AWP17 puts literature on the map in DC

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A recovering journalist is thrown into turmoil when a national newspaper hires newsroom staff. That's not a typo: hires. Not fires. Hires.

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Post Fights the Old Ennui with Quiet Newsroom Hiring Spree

Post Fights the Old Ennui with Quiet Newsroom Hiring Spree

WASHINGTON, D.C. — So uh, hi, I’m W.P. and I’m a recovering journalist.

chorus: Hey W.P.!

Hi. Some of you know that after putting together a few 24 news-free hours in a row, one day at a time, I did go back out there to conduct a little “research.”

(somber chorus nods as one)

And I was reminded that this thing is a progressive disease! You put down the notebook for a couple 24 hours. So you’re…

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The Sorrow Never Said

The Sorrow Never Said

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The Sorrow Never Said

The Sorrow Never Said

Literature Exists

A poem by Robert Graves, inspired by Robert Ritzenthaler’s “The Jungles of Tiritipa“

Literature exists, because reconciliation is sweet In imagination’s heaven—even as the hellish school boy squirms in his seat. Literature exists, and we know literature well: The boring parts of heaven, the exciting parts of hell.

Literature exists, resting on shelves everywhere, Literature…

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Over 2,000 people say they’re stopping by the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor today, Friday, Dec. 9, in support of the establishment, which was attacked by a gunman on Sunday, Dec. 4. The event has been extended through the weekend.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Dear owners, staff and patrons of Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor: Being new in town, I had no idea you existed until the #fakenews-inspired gun attack at your premises on the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016.

But I live pretty close by, and since that day have taken many walks over to your northwest D.C. block, and talked to folks outside, and discovered the brilliant Politics & Prose bookstore a couple of doors down from you. And all this has changed my life.

Now, here’s where I ask those with no connection to Comet Ping Pong to give me your eyes, because I’m trying something new and hard for me–which is, to take a stand. When I was a young news reporter, an old-school New York Times man drilled it into me never to share my politics or positions on issues. Everybody has their opinions, he said, but we in the news business had to strike a public stance of careful objectivity.

It was a sacrament with which I did my best to keep the faith in jobs I worked at papers from Madison, Wisc. to The Moscow Tribune to The Miami Herald International Edition. And it’s hard for me to break that rule here, even though I swore off newspapering after the February 2016 passing of my gorgeously gifted bride Sarah Kershaw, who for 11 years gave all she could to the New York Times–a job she loved, even if, like all jobs, it never really loved her back.

With the the dogged dedication of my early mentor–who was Sarah’s hands-down favorite professor when we were both at University of Wisconsin–my wife spent countless working days and nights hunting down the details, facts and first-hand voices you need to report news that people can trust. This is called #realnews. It’s a thing we used to think preserved the people’s trust in the stories we reported.

Fabricating stories–that is, #fakenews–was the gravest sin to Sarah, our mutual teacher and all the scribblers of that fading breed who saw the work as not merely a job, but a vital public service.

So it’s come to this: the fake news #pizzagate allegations came perilously close to causing bloodshed in a family restaurant 1.6 miles from where my residence this past Sunday. Given the passion for public-service that drove so much of Sarah‘s work, the ridiculous falsehood and that godforsakenly overused suffix (pizzagate? really?) would’ve pushed her past the peak of outrage. By this time, Day Four since the attack, Sarah’d have dug up a mountain of reporting, scored get-worthy interviews from every side, and helped the nation ratchet the down this madness.

In consideration of all this and what I owe to Sarah’s legacy I say, if ever in my life there was a time to take a stand, this is it. So here goes: Comet Ping Pong, you and your whimsical name and your friendly staff are awesome. Your street has a supportive and neighborly vibe that makes me feel welcome and at home in a city I’ve never lived before. The trolls of #pizzagate failed to get anyone killed this time, but they’d sure love it if they could, and the bastards need to know they’re being watched.

Anyway. People of Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor, please count me among your regular customers and vocal supporters. I stand with you, and urge everyone reading this to do the same.

Call to action: Join me and more than 2,000 people who’d pledged as of Wednesday to #StandWithComet today, Friday, Dec. 9, and through the weekend. Drop by the restaurant at 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW between 11:30 AM and 9:30 PM. Click their Facebook events page to confirm your attendance, interest or support.

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URGENT: If you're as sickened as me by the #fakenews-inspired attack on the Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong,come #StandWithComet at the restaurant this Friday, Dec. 9. Click over to my WordPress blog below for time and place. See you there.

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Novelist Stewart O’Nan on “The Jungles of Tiritipa: A Cold War Fairy Tale” Robert Ritzenthaler is "humbled to receive the first blurb for my novel, The Jungles of Tiritipa: A Cold War Fairy Tale…

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Ghosts of 1986

From US sales of arms to Iran to fund a secret Latin American war and the bombing of Libya to the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters, the ghosts of 1986 haunt us still.

NORTH

News broke in November that a Reagan White House aide named Oliver North had cooked up the idea to sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds to fund a CIA-directed secret war against the revolutionary Sandinista government…

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The ghosts of 1986 that haunt us still