So, yes it's true, after five years of running The Hunter College Writer's Conference we have decided to offer a smaller, no less prestigious version of the Conference this summer, called The Hunter College Summer Symposium which we will offer for $100 instead of the usual $200. You would be smart before you finish reading this blog to call 212-772-4295 and sign up because there is limited space and the keynotes are Joyce Carol Oates, and Daphne Merkin.
There are also three incredible panels: a fiction panel with Susan Isaacs, Dylan Landis, Boris Fishman, Katherine Howe, and Letty Pogrebin; the Literary Roadshow panel led by Bernie Starr which everybody raves about each year; and a new panel called Novel To Film with Warren Adler and company. Warren wrote The War of the Roses which still gives me chills when I think of the film with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. There is more but that that should be enough to whet your appetite for now.
On a different tack, I am convinced that we are the last generation of pure humans to occupy the earth and that within 50-100 years, maybe sooner, we will all be cyborgs with chips in our heads to communicate instead of phones in our hands, and designer, indefatigable lovers impossible to distinguish from what we used to think of as wives, husbands, and friends. We will live for interminable amounts of time, in virtual worlds, with enormous intelligences, some our own, and proliferate and replicate ourselves throughout the knowable universe. No I am not crazy and remember I told you when it begins to happen. Why lie, it's already beginning to happen. You are just not aware of most of it. Visit DARPA or the AI labs at the great universities and companies. Carpe Diem suddenly takes on major importance. Whoo Hoo!
While I am at it, I have a new book out from Marion Street Press entitled ADVICE FOR YOUNG WRITERS. Get yourself a copy. . . you know I wouldn't mislead you. Think about what I've already told you. On second thought get a few copies and give them out as gifts to all your friends who want to write. Thanks.
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