Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before 9PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in late Sunday evening or on Monday or Tuesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
Week 7 Internet assignment. (Repeat announcement.) For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time, you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - two which are assigned, and one which is your choice. As I've mentioned before, people will be writing and re-writing their Storybook pages all semester long, so specific feedback is really valuable. It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things need to be fixed. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more actual feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just compliments. So definitely give compliments about things you like, but please try to provide detailed feedback about the actual writing, too. All writing can be improved - bad writing can become good, and good writing can become excellent - but writers need detailed, specific feedback from their readers to do that!
March 4: Khaled Hosseini. Today, March 4, marks the birthday in 1965 of the writer Khaled Hosseini who was born in Afghanistan and then emigrated to the United States in 1980, seeking political asylum. Although he is a medical doctor, Hosseini is best known for this first novel, The Kite Runner, and also for a second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. You can read more about his life and career in this Wikipedia article and at his official website. For those of you who are aspiring writers, you can watch a video at the website where Hosseini discusses about what it takes to become a writer. Happy birthday, Mr. Hosseini!
