What I am working on right now: a series of personal essays—so far only one, actually, so it’s a very short series, but it’s a very long essay. What’s on my desk: aside from what I am in the middle of writing (see above), what’s on my desk tends to be what I am reading, either for pleasure or for possible future projects. At the moment, this includes David Hume’s letters and essays (for a writing project that I will probably decide, in the end, not to do, but it’s been instructive anyway); David Malouf’s story collection, Dream Stuff, because I’ve already read everything else I can find by this wonderful Australian writer; and Dickens’s Bleak House, which I have read twice before, but not for at least fifteen years, and it is one of those books you need to reread at intervals—or at least I do.
Wendy Lesser
On the desktop: stamped, addressed, unsealed manila envelopes of job applications with Post-it checklists of what’s in them and what still needs to go in them; the line-edited manuscript of my new novel, Osprey Island, which needs to be gone through in the next six days; a galley of John McNally’s new novel The Book of Ralph; a Post-it list (“garage door, MULCH, kitchen sink drain, Jen’s light”); a dirty spoon; a bottle of zinc lozenges; One Story issue #27; a nearly empty two-liter bottle of Hy-Vee seltzer water; a receipt from the New Pioneer Co-op for two scones, a Sunday New York Times and a bag of Newman’s Ginger-O’s, which were on sale for $2.49 and are really really good dipped in milk and have inspired odes by my poetess-friend, Laurel Snyder; a roll of one-inch masking tape; a “Florida” collector’s salad-plate with labeled...
You have reached your article limit
Sign up for a digital subscription and continue reading all new issues, plus our entire archives, for just $1.50/month.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
