MEMBER BLOG TAG: gaiman
| Friday, May 8, 2009 9:27AM | | | | The Third Bird | Tags: Andrea Davis Pinkney, Mariken Jongman, Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman
| | | | The Scholastic Auditorium was packed for the event “Leaps and Bounds, Fits and Starts: The Evolution of a Children’s Book Writer” featuring panelists Neil Gaiman, Mariken Jongman, Shaun Tan, with Andrea Davis Pinkney as the participating moderator. Unlike the children’s book event I had added the day before with its older audience, the audience was young (mostly twenty-somethings) and restive, ready to be entertained. Every self-deprecating remark or wry joke by one of the panelists was greeted with gales of laughter, lots of clapping. The buzz in the room was palpable. The confluence of illustration and text in the graphic novels and cartoons of Gaiman and Tan added an extra kick, the engine behind the buzz. As publishers (and writers) bemoan the state of... | | | | | | | Wednesday, May 6, 2009 12:41PM | | | | Boundaries of Imagination | Tags: Neil Gaiman
| | | | Halfway through Saturday’s conversation in the looming, cave-like space of Cooper Union’s Great Hall, Neil Gaiman recalled when he was just beginning his Newbery Medal winning The Graveyard Book. The idea had been in his head for nearly twenty years, he remembered, sitting and gathering density and dust after he realized it was, “a better idea than I was a writer.” Finally determined to get the idea onto paper, Gaiman spent a holiday with his family perched under an umbrella on the beach, writing what would grow into the book’s initial chapters. His then-young daughter emerged from the water, sat down next to him and asked what he was writing. Uncertain, Gaiman read aloud to her from the few sparse pages... | | | | | | | Thursday, April 26, 2007 3:36PM | | | | Town Hall Readings: Writing Home | Tags: Writing Home, Salman Rushdie, Gordimer, Gaiman, Desai, Youssef, tostaya, DeLillo, Tafdrup, Martin
| | | | The prospect of sitting through an evening of ten--count ‘em, ten--readings in one evening was a bit daunting, even given the impressive array of talent on display last night at Town Hall.
Thankfully, introductions were dispensed with. Each writer merely appeared onstage one after the other, and if there was any question as to who they were, you simply referred to the program guides handed out by ushers as you walked in.
First up was Steve Martin, reading from his to-be published memoir of his beginnings as a stand-up comic. True to form, Martin was his funny, self-deprecating self. Also, as a writer closer to the beginning of his career than the end of it, I was reassured to hear that even... | | | | | | | Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:18PM | | | | Best Ticket in Town | Tags: World Voices, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Steve Martin, Neil Gaiman, Alain Mabanckou, Saadi Youssef, Tatyana Tolstaya, Don DeLillo, Pia Tafdrup
| | | In an age of mass migration,when human herds cross borders in flight from conflict, poverty, disease, violence, what is home? How and where do we find it?
Nadine Gordimer, the penultimate reader in last night's PEN readings on "Writing Home," spoke of the millions of refugees from wars and conflicts. Silver-haired, dressed in gray, with a long white-bordered stole, she drew the photographers from the shadows at Town Hall. Just before reading the first sentence of her powerful story "The Ultimate Safari," she said, "Forget about me, the old woman. It's being narrated by an eleven year old girl." Her narrator's mother has disappeared and her father is in the civil war in Mozambique. With her grandparents and two brothers, she makes the... | | | | | |
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