The Barnes & Noble Review recommends The Moon, Come to Earth, saying that these dispatches from Lisbon “explore the meeting of self and city with alert, subtle attention.”
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The Moon, Come to Earth is now available on the Kindle.
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The novelist Philip Womack, writing for The Guardian U.K.’s The Observer, has reviewed The Moon, Come to Earth, saying, “Graham’s writing is unobtrusive and gentle, and . . there is a pleasant luminosity that renders this little book of essays serene and enjoyable.”
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The anthology Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism, and Creative Nonfiction Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, edited by Sherry Ellis, has just been published by Tarcher/Penguin; the collection includes my contribution, “Can You Hear Me Now?” Other contributors include Gay Talese, Lee Gutkind, Dinty W. Moore, Jenny Boully, Robert Atwam, Robin Hemley, Lee Zacharias, Sue Silverman, and Xu Xi. You can order the book here.
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The excellent website In Love with Lisbon (where you can lose yourself in its eloquent discoveries of the city) has posted a review of The Moon, Come to Earth, saying of the book, “This is not just an embellished travel journey, this is a story of one family and their fierce and delicate love for each other. Philip is not shy to admit his struggles as well as his victories. He is a writer with a keenly perceptive eye for detail and he is not afraid to turn that eye upon himself, to see himself in black and white and every shade of grey as we humans are. I’m not afraid to say the book moved me to tears as well as laughter.” You can find the entire review here.
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I recently gave a reading at the venerable Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, one of my favorite bookstores in the world. While I was in town the article “More Than a Travel Writer” appeared in The Daily Iowan, which you can read here. The archived broadcast of my Prairie Lights reading is now available. You can hear me read from three dispatches, field questions and, at the very beginning, sing a stanza of the new holiday classic “Walking in a Zombie Wonderland.”
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Julia Keller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has written about The Moon, Come to Earth, saying in the Chicago Tribune that the book “is so enchanting: It dances and sighs. It twitches and hums and stumbles and then rights itself, with a winsome smile. It’s like a living thing, filled with desire and uncertainty and joy and regret . . . Graham is a nimble, witty writer with a penchant for teasing out the small, telling detail from the crowded scene around him. . . and this book is the perfect companion as one contemplates those mysteries, those ceaseless journeys outward and inward.” You can read the entire article here. Keller’s review was also reprinted in the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, and the Orlando Sentinel.
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I recently gave a reading from The Moon, Come to Earth at the Meacham Writers’ Workshop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a terrific three day conference, and I was so happy to meet George Singleton, a writer I’ve long admired, and to see a former student, poet and writer Rebecca Cook. My reading, from the dispatch “Go, Whatchamacallits!” can be heard here.
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While interviewing me for Inside Higher Ed about my latest book, The Moon, Come to Earth: Dispatches from Lisbon, Oronte Churm gets me to confess my fear of jellyfish.
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“The Pleasures of Saudade,” my article on the exciting energy of contemporary Portuguese music–complete with MP3s, photos and videos–is ready for your toe-tapping enjoyment at The Morning News.
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Write the Book has rebroadcast a radio interview about my Lisbon dispatches, which can be heard here.
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I’ll be on tour this fall for The Moon, Come to Earth, and here are the dates and times for my forthcoming readings. If anyone is in the area and interested in dropping by, please do!
Tuesday, October 13, 6:30 PM
Slonim Living Room
Sarah Lawrence College
Bronxville, New York
Friday, October 16, 6 PM
Rifkind Room, 6/316
The City College of New York
160 Convent Avenue
New York, NY
Thursday, October 22, 6pm
Richardson Library, room 300
DePaul University (Lincoln Park Campus)
2350 N. Kenmore
Chicago, Illinois
Friday, October 30, 7 PM
Meacham Writers’ Workshop
University Center, Raccoon Mountain Room
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Monday, November 9, 4:30 PM
Illini Union Bookstore
809 South Wright Street
University of Illinois
Champaign, Illinois
Wednesday, November 18, 7 PM
Prairie Lights Bookstore
15 South Dubuque Street
Iowa City, Iowa
In a future posting, I’ll list my book tour dates for Spring 2010.