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Pacific University's MFA in Writing has nearly reached the midpoint of our 8-day residency in Seaside, Oregon. Wonderful craft lectures so far by writers Pam Houston, Kwame Dawes, Frank Gaspar, Porter Shreve, Debra Gwartney, David Long, Laura Hendrie, Judy Blunt, Marvin Bell, Valerie Laken, and Carolyn Coman. My own contribution was a talk called "The Courage to Sound Like Ourselves," featuring the writings of Joan Didion, Marilynne Robinson, Zadie Smith, Cheryl Strayed, Leslie Jamison, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca Skloot, and Francine Prose.All this and so much more to go.

The Los Angeles Times is running my review of James Carroll's latest, Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age. Here is the takeaway:There are no words as powerful as our human lives. Carroll knows this. It is his final word. And for Christians, he concludes, the fullness of their lives remains Christ's only hope.

Available today—I saw it in Whole Foods this morning—is the new issue, the holiday issue, of Lucky Peach, "Feel the Joy." Inside you can find my story, "Fast Food," about Ramadan at Honest Chops, a halal butcher shop in New York City's East Village. For a quick perusal of the magazine, click here.Many thanks to photographer Liz Barclay.

Next Monday, October 27, the New School is hosting a public conversation with New Yorker staff writer D.T. Max, who turned his 2009 essay "The Unfinished" into the New York Times-best selling Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. Max will talk about Wallace's life and legacy. I am pleased to say I'll be asking the questions.Monday, October 27, 6 p.m.The New School's Eugene Lang CollegeWollman Hall65 West 11th Street, Room B500More details here.

I am so pleased that next Sunday, September 21, I'll be moderating the panel "America, Disillusioned" at the Brooklyn Book Festival, which brings together Jennifer Percy (Demon Camp), Sandeep Jauhar (Doctored), and Anna Holmes (The Book of Jezebel). Sure to be fascinating.Where: Brooklyn Law School Moot CourtroomWhen: 9/21, 11 AMMore information here.

The New York Times Disunion blog has a short piece from me today about Emancipation Day and what Frederick Douglass called the "sham" of the Fourth of July. Slave writer Harriet Jacobs leads the festivities. This piece includes excerpts of the her only public speech to have survived. On August 1, 1864, speaking to wounded members of the U.S. Colored Troops, Jacobs proclaimed:To-day, you are in arms for the freedom of your race and the defence of your country—to-day this flag is significant to you. Soldiers you have made it the symbol of freedom for the slave, unfurl it, stand by it, until the breeze upon which it floats is so pure, that a slave cannot breathe its air.

Nick Maniatis, who runs the essential David Foster Wallace resource The Howling Fantods, has been reading and reviewing Gesturing Toward Reality. He says: "This collection has moved from the very interesting to must have."Read more here and then explore The Howling Fantods.

Flavorwire and Melville House have invited me this evening, 6/11, to participate on a panel with Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams) and Jen Percy (Demon Camp) to discuss the legacy of James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The panel will be moderated by Flavorwire's own Elisabeth Donnelly (The Misshapes).Wednesday, June 11, 7-9 pmFlavorpill HQ594 Broadway, Suite 1212NYC

June's Harper's, on newsstands May 21, contains an essay from me titled "Our Common Trouble," about my meetings with Dwight Maxwell, the man who, in 1982, killed my father. The piece is also about criminal justice in Florida.When I arrived at the house, I paced the fence, peering in where I could to spot movement back behind the collapsing garage, thinking I might see some sign of life in the house through the raising of a window shade. But there were only roosters in the distance and crickets. The dog lay still behind the fence. I returned to the side of the car and waited.Subscription required.

The latest issue of Lucky Peach, "All You Can Eat," contains my story about the birth of Snowday, a New York City foodtruck that employs formerly incarcarated young people. Art for the piece was done by James Chong.See the cover, by Jordan Speer, here.Find the issue and subscribe here.

Today the LA Review of Books has a new review essay from me about Joshua Dubler's essential book about prison and American religion, Down in the Chapel.It's winter, early 2006. And in winter, Dubler has come to see, "when the wind pushes up from the valley, driving rain and snow sideways into the worn concrete of the wall's outer shell, the prison feels suddenly like a refuge and the world outside apathetic and grim, a place for coyotes and bears, but not remotely suited for men." There's an accusation here, of course, because they are men who live here. And they're taking refuge from the rest of us. We put them there.