ObamaRama debuts on BlogCritics.org new site

BlogCritics Magazine launched a new site yesterday, loaded with great reviews and commentary on books, music, movies, culture and more.

BlogCritics publisher, Eric Olsen, compiled an long, thoughtful article here, with contributions from many of the BlogCritics.org team, looking at the relationship between President Obama and our popular culture. It's a fascinating article, including an analysis on how Obama affects book sales, contributed by Tim Gebhart. It's astonishing!

Especially for you writers, I'm pointing out my own contribution to the article here:
The Power of Words, Helen Gallagher

NPR audio on 3 inspiring writing books

Heard this on NPR and thought you might enjoy the audio essay by an author who succeeded in getting her novel published... Link

How shall I blog thee? Let me click the ways...

Today is Shakespeare's 445th birthday, and here in Chicago, our Mayor Daley wants everyone to talk like The Bard today.

Here is a resource to give you the complete works of Shakespeare's 38 plays on your Windows computer: Follow link thusly, to New York Times article.

The European version of our new world digital library

Referring to my most recent post on the World Digital Library, Europe now launches Europena, where you can search cultural collections of Europe's greatest treasures from libraries and museums.

That means millions of digital items provided by Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual organsiations, available to you at home. What a marvelous boon to American writers and researchers.

Spring Writing Reminder

Reminder - get out from behind your keyboard and desk. Join fellow writers at some of Chicago's fantastic writing resource groups:

Chicago Women in Publishing
International Women's Writing Guild (Chicago critique groups)
Independent Writers of Chicago
Midwest Writers Association
Off-Campus Writer's Workshop

The World Digital Library will be a reality on April 21, 2009

Until now, I always loved the U.S. Library of Congress for its majestic reading room.

Since 2005, the LOC has been working through the National Archives & Records Administration to create a digital archive and share it with the works of other countries in what is now being birthed as the

World Digital Library

The U.S. images contributed to the World Digital Library are now available at www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/world-digital-library.

The entire project lives at http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org


The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.

The project’s goal is to promote international understanding and to provide a resource for use by students, teachers, and general audiences.

Writing!

It's a great life when you have the desire and talent to write. It opens up a world of ideas and creativity. The next time you lose your edge, and feel that the writing process is a grind, visualize writing in a whole new way:



Release Your Writing...

Image: VisualThesaurus.com