As you may or may not know, a film version of the Douglas Adams classic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is opening in theaters this weekend. I know this book remains a popular favorite among many, so I thought I’d ask what you think about it being adapted into film. Do you plan to see it? Why or why not? If you catch it this weekend, be sure to give us a short review.

But now, because I’m fond of changing …

On Sunday I hosted a reading at Gallery Neptune in Bethesda, Maryland as part of the Bethesda Literary Festival. This was the second year LitKicks participated in the LitFest and my third reading at the gallery. I think I enjoy the experience more each time. I don’t know if it’s because the space was specifically calibrated for poetry or if it just happens that the right mix of people converge on the spot or (and this is most …

I think it’s great that Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles: Volume 1″ was nominated for a National Book Award, listed by the New York Times as one of the top five books of 2004, and awarded many other honors. In fact, the old guy has written an amazingly breezy, funny and original book, and he deserves the recognition.

But I’m a little annoyed when I read reviews depicting this book as Dylan’s long-awaited “true story”. Sure, the book is billed as an autobiography, but …

I don’t remember how exactly I ended up in their yard, asking about the flowers that grew behind their house, but I’m grateful for whatever twist of fate brought Lucy and Rusty into my life. They were in their sixties and I was five, but age doesn’t matter when there’s friendship to be had. They lived two houses away from me, and after making their acquaintance, I visited them nearly every day. I was a precocious kid with insatiable curiosity, and they had …

We’re always interested in hearing more about the habits of readers and writers. Why? It’s because we find people infinitely fascinating and well, we’re also nosey. Oh sure, it may seem like we are trying to get some good book recommendations or to find out if anyone shares our pick for favorite poem. This is just a cover for our neverending curiosity about you. We often ask “What are you reading?” or “What are you not reading?” and even, “What …

I haven’t been paying much attention to the recent Pope John Paul II media craze, but a message from LitKicks member Tomcat (Penn Jacobs) is making me wonder if I shouldn’t take more of an interest.

Karol Wojtyla of Wadowice, Poland was a secular poet, playwright and essayist before he entered the priesthood. After leaving his hometown to study literature and philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, he fell in with a theatrical crowd and established himself as a key member of an acting …

Salman Rushdie is a writer who may perhaps be best known for the controversy surrounding his novel The Satanic Verses (and the resulting fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini), but in a recent lecture at Hamilton College, he had some interesting things to say about writing and the people who read it:

Society’s obsession to draw connections between an author’s fictional literature and his or her actual life is the “disease” of the current fiction novel, said author Salman Rushdie.

Readers either assume a …

Our weekly Seen and Heard update will return soon, and we hope that it will contain a lower percentage of obituary coverage. We recently heard from LitKicks member Rubiao who also noted this trend and wrote in to share some thoughts on another great writer that passed away on February 21, 2005.

It seems that this month was a bad month for famous literary icons and for at least one major religious icon as well. Those giants who have passed away have …

Poker is a writer’s game. Beyond all the hype, it’s a serious and fascinating game with a novelistic scope. It’s hard to explain what I mean by “novelistic”, but I think this will be understood by anyone who has ever caught poker fever (and if you haven’t caught the fever already, play about five hands and I think you will).

The way you play poker expresses who you are. You might be careless, spineless, suspicious, impulsive, malicious — whatever you are, your poker …

I’m always writing, even when I’m not writing, perhaps because I have a tendency of seeing my daily life as the breeding ground for material, the great big meeting where I take the notes that I’ll use at some time or other. In my head, I take notes on just about everything: the way a leaf floats on top of the river before getting sucked under the current, the sensation of lip gloss, the strangely warm/cool smell of freshly-turned springtime earth, the careful choreography …