A thank you to my students, a report on the coming days

It is a pleasure peculiar to the teacher that, even after classes end and the students go on their way, so many find their way back to your own soul-er home.  They report on their journeys.  They change the tenor of the conversation you were having with yourself. They make you believe, above all else, that the intensity of what was then matters still, right now.

You students know who you are, and you know that I am grateful.

In other news, I prepare today to meet with the 14-year-old San Francisco-based book club that travels once each year to meet an author who has written of his/her city.  We'll be gathering at Chanticleer garden on Saturday, where two of my books (Ghosts in the Garden and Nothing but Ghosts) take place; we'll talk as well about Dangerous Neighbors. My thanks to Kathye Fetsko Petrie, a writer and writer advocate, who suggested my name to the group, and a warm welcome to Kyle Taylor and her band of reader/travelers.

I prepare as well to meet, on Monday, with the students of the 25th Annual Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers' Conference, which Lisa Zeidner so brilliantly concocts each year.  I'm joining (quite late in the game) a cast that includes the likes of Jane Bernstein, Ken Kalfus, Lise Funderburg, J.T. Barbarese, and Peter Trachtenberg.  I'm offering my thoughts on creative nonfiction.  I'm banking on some time alone with Lisa, whose friendship I have grown to cherish.