If you’re reading this, it means you survived Black Friday. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. Black Friday can be terrifying. You don’t mess with someone who has stood in line for hours in the middle of the night to get a copy of the new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” for their Xbox. […]
Author Archives: Chris Bohjalian
21
Oct
Oct
For most of America, the heartbreaking faces of Syrian refugees this year have belonged to children. We have seen them drowned and we have seen them stunned into silence by warfare and covered in blood. (We’ve also seen them likened to Skittles, but that appalling analogy belongs only to the Trumps.) At the moment, however, […]
21
Sep
Sep
Greetings! “The Sleepwalker” does not go on sale until January 10, 2017. Right now, however, thanks to Doubleday Books and Goodreads, you can enter to win free advance copies. Simply click here and fill out the short form. The contest lasts until this Friday, September 23. Fingers crossed my work never disappoints you. All the […]
29
Jul
Jul
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends, I’ve been asked a lot this summer what I’m reading, especially from readers who are either devastated that Lin-Manuel Miranda has left “Hamilton” or devastated that he has left “Hamilton” and chosen not to run for political office – any office. I feel their pain. I […]
24
Apr
Apr
Last Friday morning, Rep. Jim Costa placed a wreath in Fresno, California’s Masis Ararat Cemetery at the grave of an Armenian who died peacefully in San Francisco 56 years ago. Most Americans are more familiar with the Peloponnesian War than they are with the fellow Costa remembered. Even in the San Joaquin Valley, home to roughly […]
06
Jan
Jan
John Gardner was thrown from his motorcycle and died the year before his book, The Art of Fiction, was published in 1983. Consequently, he never saw the influence that his short, smart guide to good writing would have on so many aspiring writers – including me. In the last thirty years, I’ve thought often of […]
24
Dec
Dec
Fifty-two years ago, on December 24th, the three astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon were approaching the lunar sunrise. Yes, it was Christmas Eve. In the United States, it was nighttime. It was 1968. Cue the space music. My family and I were living in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, […]
21
Nov
Nov
Dear Friends who Read and Readers who are Friends, I haven’t posted here since I stopping penning Idyll Banter on a weekly basis. I miss the column some days more than others, but I never wanted to impose on your goodwill by phoning it in. But make no mistake: Its absence has meant I have […]
06
Sep
Sep
Vermont has never been spared the yin and yang of the world. We were certainly reminded this summer that we are not exempt from violence and death in Berlin and Barre and Greensboro, as well as on our interstates and usually quiet country roads. Most of us, however, simply went about our lives. We swam […]
30
Aug
Aug
The back-to-school sales fliers started arriving in our mailboxes back around the 4th of July, the scariest mail of the summer for students and teachers alike. And now the moment has arrived: for much of the world, classes have resumed. At the 116-student elementary school here in Lincoln, Vermont the new year commenced last Wednesday. […]
