Diary

Border Crossings, May 2008
According to today’s reporting, more than 70,000 thousand refugees have fled Ukraine for Moldova. I return in memory, shock, and disbelief to my Eastern European “roots trip,” as

Paperback Writer 2022
Almost exactly three years ago (longer in pandemic time) I published my book about women’s friendships, My Brilliant Friends. It’s now out in paperback, again with Jojo Karlin’s

My Cancer on Lockdown
For a long time, I’ve been living with cancer, lung cancer to be exact. This is in fact year 8. I had more or less come to terms

Remembering Feminists and Brilliant Friends at Sussex University
Dear Friends, If you happen to have London plans in February, I’d love to see you at my conversation with Margaretta Jolly about her extraordinary new book Sisterhood

Scenes from a Library: My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism—in Paris.
Despite the backdrop of a rainy October evening, my conversation with my old friend Celeste Schenck, President of the American University in Paris

Friendship in Paris
Chères amies, chers amis, If you are headed to Paris in October—or perhaps are already there—please stop by for one of my conversations—with friends—about My Brilliant Friends. The

“The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac”
I’m between scans again, or should I say still? The latest one left the oncologist and the pulmonologist frankly puzzled. Something new and strange had appeared on my

Death Cleaning and Me
I’m not Swedish, not even remotely Scandinavian. But these days any title with death in it attracts my interest. As Margareta Magnusson, who says she is somewhere between

Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be.