Just to brighten the day...and to counteract the whining in my last post...here is a painting (click to enlarge) by Anne Schreivogl, who was kind enough to send me pictures of some of her work, knowing that I would love it (since we have almost the same birthday!) The bright colors are making me smile as I sit here at my desk, and also reminding me that I must get back to my current knitting project. I've been traveling too much, and knitting is hard to take along on a plane (and Tuesday morning I head to Sarasota, where it will...I hope and assume....be warm, and I don't much like knitting during hot weather)

All this traveling has also thrown a monkey wrench into writing and I must found a way back into my work, not just my knitting. I will be in Florida for three days (this time strictly vacation, visiting close friends), then the following week to Flint, Michigan, to see one more production of THE GIVER.

And my current project, though quite brief, is oddly difficult. Next Sunday I am to introduce Alice Hoffman, who will be the keynote speaker at the PEN Hemingway-Winship Awards at the Kennedy Library. This is a very big and elegant event. Alice follows last year's keynoter, Joyce Carol Oates. Ordinarily an introduction is not a big deal; people are waiting to hear the speaker, after all, not the preliminary words. But Alice is a friend of mine (another with whom I share a birthday week!) and I want to do her—and her fine body of work—justice.

So that is today's project. And tomorrow I sit down with the panel of judges for this year's Susan Bloom Award— we've all been reading manuscripts like crazy — to select the 2008 winner(s). This is an award for a previously unpublished New England children's author, given by the Children's Book Caucus of PEN New England, the tenth year of the award's existence. Many of the previous winners have gone on to publication—part of the award consists of a reading by a major publisher— so it is a big deal. The winner(s) will be honored at an event May 4th.

And here is another painting by Anne Schreivogl.