Citizenship | Literature
Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.
What began as a bold experiment in grassroots service produced future ambassadors to help guide U.S. diplomacy through seven decades of global upheaval.
Read, Listen, Watch
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O’Reilly is not a journalist. He’s not worth my time. My criticism of Brian Williams, by contrast, was a necessary purge. I’d liked his work and trusted it, so felt betrayed, let down, disappointed. As far as O’Reilly is concerned, the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman put it best: Brian Williams got suspended from NBC News because…
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I’ve been known to comment on various blogs: “I’ve never had writer’s block. I have no shortage of things to write about or the desire to write them. If I’m not writing, I’m chewing on it.” Ok. In January I blew through 20 chapters of a first draft. Four weeks and done, rough edges and all.…
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Did you know that Popular Online Vendor X bans “distasteful content” from honest reviews of the very books they’d be happy to sell you? That’s right: reviews of books full of obscenities sold on their site won’t be posted if those reviews contain the same profane, immoral, or distasteful content as the product they want you to buy. I tried for two weeks to…
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Vote for your favorite Peace Corps Book of 2014. People in the Peace Corps community know well the agency’s three goals: To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served To promote a better…
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A lot of excuses have been made on behalf of Brian Williams since his fabrications went public last week. None of them are good. None of them can buy back the credibility every journalist requires as their professional stock in trade. But I was surprised to find one of the worst excuses in The New…
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I don’t plan on writing porn any time soon. Probably never. But this article from today’s New York Times Magazine, about the life of one prolific pornographer, had me thinking about what I write and how I write it. The piece helped me calibrate the struggle against my greatest bane: The lack of time. I’m a career man with a job…
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Two weeks until the February 15th deadline for submitting your manuscript to this year’s Dundee International Book Prize. Curious about what floats their boat? Read last year’s shortlisted works: My manuscript Sea Never Dry, thick with crooked cops, fetish priests, Internet fraudsters, and orphans turning a buck off a West African e-waste dump, made last year’s cut. Read the excerpt below. Now,…
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What if W. Mitt Romney is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016? And what if Sarah Palin joins the race? What if Mittens chooses Palin as his running mate? I give you their chit-chat: Palin: Who hijacked the term ‘Feminist’? A cackle of radicals who want to crucify other women with whom they disagree. M: I went to…
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This review appears in the latest issue of Crime Factory magazine–the excellent Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! by Douglas Lindsay. Enjoy, coffee drinkers and Beatles lovers! Before Douglas Lindsay’s Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! descends into nightmare, the narrative hints at a story about the ho-hum life: the humorous musings of a middle-aged man resigned to a tired…
Ben East Books 