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Our most ancient origins lie in the sea. Palaeontologists and archaeobiologists tell us that two billion years ago, give or take an eon, the first self-replicating molecule somehow assembled [...]

Writers of all stripes and levels of experience have something in common. It’s not necessarily a particular love of words. Some writers, after all, are moved more by a love […]

I’m sitting in Campo Santa Margarita here in Venice at a café table, on the shady side of the square. Across from me, beyond the trees and a couple of […]

I’d like today to write a disquisition on walking.  The subject might fascinate me because I am myself so bad at it. Whatever the reason, though, I’m sitting now on […]

Hello from Venice Richard, Fred and I have been thinking a lot about creativity in the last few weeks. First, we’re in a city that exemplifies creativity. Whichever way you […]

We climb the stairs to the first floor of Ca’della Corte and mill about around the long dining room table. Liza says, out of the blue: “Persiflage…” “Persiflage?” I say. […]

I am fascinated by memory because it is at once so precise and so vague. I am astonished that our brains hold within them the minutiae of events and incidents […]

Let’s fantasise for a moment. You’ve finished your book, you’ve secured an agent (you only had to write thirty-seven emails to do so), and they’ve managed to place your manuscript […]

Something has shifted this year. We’re (many of us through necessity) spending less. We’re more aware of what’s important. That means focusing on the people we hold dear and on […]

“Meaning” is the thing that lies behind, or beneath, or beyond. The sighs of a lover are what we note. But the meaning of those sighs is what we interpret. […]

Those who are “given the job of telling stories,” according to Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, “should construct fictions that help seek the truth of the human condition”. I love her […]

Elmore Leonard famously said: Never start with the weather. “But does this mean I never, ever mention the weather at the beginning of my book?” one of our participants asked […]