Gregory Dicum is many things: a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Economist, and elsewhere; the author of 6 books, most recently The Pisco Book; and co-founder and President of MondoWindow, a company which enhances the experience of air travel and grew out of his book Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air. You should try it next time you fly.More
Contributor Spotlight: Elrena Evans
Literary Mama has brought me many great writer friends, and Elrena Evans was one of the first. She submitted an essay to the section I edited, and over the course of our editorial correspondence we hatched the plans for our first book; Mama, PhD was our exploration of whether it’s possible to combine a career in higher education with a satisfying family life. We learned a lot about each other during the years we worked on that book — we had three children, so that alone gave us plenty to talk about — and Elrena published a lot of terrific work: a long-running column on Literary Mama, a collection of short stories — but I didn’t know what her food story might be until her pitch arrived. More
Contributor Spotlight: Dani Klein Modisett
It’s one of the most common tropes of childhood eating, the kid who will only eat white food. Lisa’s son did it briefly, and as a child, my brother wouldn’t tolerate soy sauce on his rice, only table salt. What do you do with kids like that? Do you just wait it out, trusting that eventually they’ll want some color in their meals? Do you stuff them with vitamins? Do you sneak spinach into their brownies? More
Contributor Spotlight: Catherine Newman
Catherine’s voice was always one of my favorites in Brain, Child and the late, lamented Wondertime magazine; her carefully-observed writing steps so lightly, and with such wit, that you don’t realize she’s led you to a serious topic until you find yourself brushing away tears of recognition. “Ohhh, she gets it,” her readers marvel; “And she tells it like it is.” Readers loved her memoir, Waiting For Birdy, and now find her sensible advice monthly in an etiquette column for Real Simple.More
Contributor Spotlight: Elizabeth Crane
Liz and I like to tell the story of how we met, twenty years ago, when I first moved to San Francisco and interviewed for a job as an office assistant at the translation agency Liz managed. At the end of the interview — in which we mostly talked about our favorite books and poetry — she gave me a math test to see if I could accurately estimate the cost of translation jobs. I was off by a factor of 100. But Liz still hired me, figuring that a calculator could compensate for my mathematical deficiencies, and that interesting office conversation is priceless.More