I shall wish her well and be the first to welcome her to “the writing life,” which, despite its horrors, is possibly one of the few sorts of lives worth living at all.

Opening a book in the middle of a chapter always made me feel like I was interrupting a group of strangers, wandering unannounced into their villages and apartments and taxis and slums.

Depression is an illness, and no fault of the person who suffers from it.

It was a day like a thousand others, she said. It had begun with caffeine and ended in a desire to slam her head into the drawer of her desk.

One theory here: the deanery is annoyed with our requests for parity and, weary of waiting for us to retire, has decided to kill us. Let the academic year begin!

I would like to confess things to her, to throw myself in her lap, to open the cage of my chest and show her the bones.

Maybe the things she loved most weren’t meant to be permanent. Maybe the fact that they existed was enough.

Suffice it to say that the LOR has usurped the place of my own work, now adorned with cobwebs and dust in a remote corner of my office.

Your desk should send to everyone who sees it the message: All is well; I am in control.

I haven’t published a novel in six years; instead, I fill my departmental hours casting words of praise into the bureaucratic abyss. On multiple occasions, serving on awards committees, I was actually required to write LORs to myself.