Houghton had its launch meeting for my new novel, The Queen of the Night. I think it went well.

Hello from Leipzig, Germany, a place that loved books so much it was nicknamed Leserland, or, Country of Readers. I’m writing to you from the apartment given to me by the [...]

I have a new essay over at The Awl, 21 Lies Writers Tell Themselves.

For months now we’ve been talking about “post-truth politics” because of the extent of Romney’s lies, and yet it was still uncanny to watch Romney lie on stage last night about his positions [...]

I am happy to report back after a long silence with some news. I’m grateful to my editors at The Morning News for nominating me for the new Best American [...]

Two essays appeared this summer, at The Morning News and The LA Review of Books. Both began as blog posts here and had to, per the rules of this blog [...]

Sometimes, after he’d been awake a few hours, though still in bed, Proust would decide on impulse to go out and see a friend. At ten or eleven at night [...]

From the memoirs of Cora Pearl, one of the most famous courtesans of 2nd Empire France. Her memoirs are more interesting than most of what you can read about her. [...]

The other night I described this method to my friend Mike Albo and he said, “You jerk! Why didn’t you tell me about this ten years ago?”* So, I’m telling [...]