Telephone Road. Thomas Derr, Colgate University Press: Hamilton, 2012. There is something of a gap in contemporary Western literature in what might be called, after Camus, Sartre and perhaps Pirsig, the philosophical novel. Thomas Derr's Telephone Road…

Ever since I was five years old, September has meant the start not only of school, but also of football. In honor of this, I have created the All-Time, All-Star, All-Literature Football team. If I have cut your favorite player, let me know in the comments.…

I find myself standing a little ways away from my lectern, staring off into space and picking at my lips with bitten-short fingernails. This happens every once in a while when I am working--I find that I unconsciously drift away physically from my workspace…

"Everyone has a personal story to tell." This is one of the core values of Writers in the Schools. Along with many other UH creative writing graduate students, I work for WITS, a non-profit organization that sends writers into classrooms across the Houston…

From an overabundance of fruit (mixed with elegant china and random doll parts) to houses of "liberated" mugs, the 2013 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Biennial at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft has a little bit of everything.…

[As our story continues...on the last episode of "That's Called a Montage": "I've attempted to render something productive from the hours (ahem, years) I have dedicated to a not-so-sleepy little Colorado town--one that is, in fact, quite animated. The…

At the end of the spring semester, after being inspired by a bit of Ellen DeGeneres stand-up in which she concludes procrastination is the universe's way of telling us to live in the moment ("Procrastinate now. Don't put it off.") I've attempted to render…

Over at The Kenyon Review, the editors have been running a stellar series on their blog called "Why We Chose It." And I admit: I've been stalking these posts. Not because the Kenyon Review's website looks so good (which it does), or because it includes…

Recently I had an "acoustic experience of terrestrial relief." The Art of Failure (the acoustic art website, not the band) recently featured a project called The Flat Earth Society, an acoustic experiment that allows you to hear the "hills and dales"…

When you enter the galleries at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, a conspicuously placed sign immediately admonishes you not to touch the art. Frequent visitors to art museums might find such an edict superfluous; but at the HCCC right now, this…