img_18261It’s writing group week at Point Reyes, California–nine of us here (several in absentia) with Pam Houston.  We arrived Thursday night at the Old Point Reyes Schoolhouse Compound for a dinner of fish stew.

We come from all over the country–from Columbus, Georgia to Bend, Oregon.   In the mornings we critique manuscripts; in the afternoons, walks on the beach. This morning we did a phone conference connecting with New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Saturday night we took Highway One into the city to the Make-Out Room.  Pam was giving a reading, along with several other people.  It was an amazing drive, winding around the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean withviews of San Francisco in the distance. Sorry to say, I got a little carsick.

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Yesterday we walked into town to the independent bookstore, Point Reyes Books. I bought a copy of Yiyun Li‘s  (pronounced E-yoon) new novel, The Vagrants, recently reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Book Review section. She was driving up from Oakland to eat dinner with us.  We sat around the kitchen table, eating lamb, curried cauliflower, and spinach.  And talking about American children today and how we write and where characters come from.img_1805

Shortly we’ll be eating hamburgers and drinking milkshakes at the Station House Cafe.  Then it’s to the Lighthouse