Seneca, Politkovskaya, and the Endangered Magic of Literature

I had the honor of meeting Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who wrote passionately and beautifully on behalf of both civilians and soldiers caught up in the brutality of the war in Chechnya. In 2002 PEN honored Anna here in LA. Almost exactly four years later she was murdered in her Moscow apartment building. She was 48 years old.

Political Incorrectness: History in the Family

Today it’s popular to say that political correctness is destroying America, but a recently discovered set of century-old clippings offer a cautionary reminder of what our country was like without political correctness. Goddard MFA faculty member Aimee Liu’s opinion piece about political correctness and her family history was published in the LA Times on March 27.

Interview with Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi

Goddard’s Port Townsend MFA faculty member Aimee Liu will be interviewing Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi on Tuesday, March 15, in Los Angeles about her new book Love, Loss, and What We Ate. This vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, traces the arc of Lakshmi’s unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera—a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.

And have you read… Flash House?

1) What was the impetus for writing this book? The first inspiration for this novel was my own family. I lived in India as a child for two years, during which my father worked for the UN and my mother for the Indian Government. My father flew all over Asia for work,...