Mark Salzman

Iron & Silk by Mark Salzman is the Travel Essay Book Club selection for Monday November 23rd at 6:30. Salzman can definitely write, his works of fiction are powerful stuff. The Soloist was nominated for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Lying Awake is set in a convent where a nun must decide if she will undergo ... (more)medical treatment for epilepsy that may take away the raptures she has always believed were her connection with God. What would you do if everything you believed might be an error? Powerful. Iron & Silk is the true story of Salzman’s time in China teaching English at Hunan Medical College. He was able to interact with the Chinese in ways your average traveler would not be able to achieve. Salzman studied Chinese language and literature at Yale. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude in 1982. So he had a few more language skills than most American visitors in China. He was also deeply interested in martial arts, having studied since he was a child. He continues his education in martial arts in China. The writing is beautiful, the story interesting, and the country worthy of interest. The Travel Essay Book Club should have a good time.

(NOTE: Tickets $10.00 EA / FREE for Educators & Students)

DESCRIPTION: For author Salzman (Iron and Silk, The Soloist, The Laughing Sutra, True Notebooks), the writing process works like this: he has to write a book every conceivable wrong way until only the right way is left, and along the ... (more)way he has to become completely blocked. In 1994, he began work on a novel about a cloistered nun diagnosed with Dostoevsky Syndrome, a neurological disorder frequently associated with intense religiosity. Five years later he had gotten so stuck that he could only write with a towel draped over his head and a tinfoil skirt wrapped around his waist. Want to know more? Of course you do.