Cross Connections

I like Richard Flanagan already. He has won this year’s Booker Prize for ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ that I have not read. I ha...

"You know nothing about the business of writing," he told me. Then came the details. How to get off. Get it off. Take off. Take ...

  “Alexander Cockburn no more” would sound like a terrible headline. The reality of it is as biting as his prose. To think that I just got ...

From the film 'The Sweet Smell of Success' Years ago, a web portal I wrote for in the nascent stages of news and views on the Ne...

Due to the untimely demise of one of my characters, I was in mourning and could therefore not submit the story on time. This is a real not...

Why the hell is ‘journalistic space’* being taken over by micro-blogging? Why is it that when one person breaks wind there, a whole bunch of...

Forget a chair named after you at a tony university. Several dead bodies can soon claim to have been at your place if you have the honour ...

Writers who think blogging is a waste of words are like men who don't masturbate for fear of wasting their sperm or making them weak. ...

 Should an unfinished novel by a writer whose works have a special stamp be completed and adapted for the stage? How can anyone complete Cha...

She has “slaughtered sparrows and the English language”, they say, and have awarded her for the “crappiest of sentences”. They are generous,...

She echoes my writer self. I am sitting here looking into what seems like a well, but I am dragged into it and soon the reflection is not w...

 ? , ; : ( ... ) ! Punctuation marks are to writing what meaningful pauses are to conversation. The comma drama was a yawn that became ...

Yes. So? I don’t plead guilty to it. I am not guilty about it. The accusations have been piling up for many months now: I do not feel victi...

I was on the other side, being interviewed. It wasn’t the first time but I constantly found myself asking the questions inside my head. It’s...

“Why?” was my first instinct. Why and how can business books adapt into comics? Then it struck me that with the graphic novel gaining curren...

After five minutes of deep contemplation, I am ready with my book 'What Every Woman Thinks About Apart From Sex'. It will have blank...

It’s maroon-coloured, slick and light. I’d lie down with it propped on my stomach like a baby as words would dribble out of its warm, white ...

“Have you been there?” “How well do you know about the place, the person, the idea…?” These queries have beset me and, I am certain, sever...

There is literary merit in the fact that J D Salinger’s toilet seat is up for auction. Think about the ideas many creative people say they g...

X, Y, Z belong to three nationalities and do not live in their homelands. We first ‘met’ on the page and the monitor screen. I was a byline....