Michael Erard
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"Published Work"
Out of the blue today dropped this awesome review of Babel No More from Kirkus Reviews:
BABEL NO MORE
The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners
Author: Erard, Michael
Erard (Um…: Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, 2007) reports the results of his attempts to locate people who are [...]
Continue Reading →The other day, I got an email out of the blue from the managing editor at a Big Magazine that’s often associated with literature and the South. Do you have anything we can publish? she asked. I love it when that happens.
Continue Reading →My essay in the New York Times today is the product of a month’s worth of naptimes. The baby’s, that is, not my own. I have to say, though, that my dreams over the first year of his life have been so vivid and intense, every night packed with dreamtime craziness, probably because the [...]
Continue Reading →1. I looked at my Nielsen Bookscan numbers for Um... in all of its formats, and realized that
2. in Denver, five paperbacks were sold at the same week before Thanksgiving, so
3. I took a chance and called Tattered Cover on the off-chance the sales happened there, and on the phone discovered
4. [...]
Continue Reading →I wrote a review of the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style for Design Observer, pointing out how thoroughly they’ve departed from their bookish bibliocentrism and embraced, as never before, the digital reality. Apparently I noticed some things that no one had seen before, such as this fact:
The words “electronic,” “software,” [...]
Continue Reading →Linguists made out well in the MacArthur Fellowships, with awards going to Carol Padden, a sign language linguist at UC-San Diego, and Jesse Little Doe Baird, a Wampanoag (or Wôpanâak) language preservationist. I interviewed Padden for a sign language story in 2005; I was writing for the New Scientist about a spontaneous sign language that [...]
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Last weekend we went to NYC so I could meet up with my new agent, David Patterson, of Foundry Media, where this was waiting for me at the door:
It was good to talk, talk shop, talk books, talk writing, the whole thing. But first, we had to ogle my son, who loved the [...]
Continue Reading →Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii announced that he’s sponsoring the National Language Coordination Act of 2009, which he also sponsored in 2005. The bill would create a cabinet-level language czar to “oversee, coordinate, and implement continuing national security and language education initiatives.” Sounds great, but if the czar has no budget control, it probably won’t [...]
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My essay on “so” for April’s Seed just came online. But do see the print version if you can: the graphics, a spill of 70′s style loop-de-loops in black and white, is gorgeous.
Continue Reading →The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Globe & Mail, New Scientist, and The Texas Observer were all graced with my work in the last two weeks. There are links to it all off the “current” button above.
Continue Reading →This is the fourth piece I’ve published since 1996 about Joe, a friend I made during the summer I lived in Alpine, Texas. It begins like this:
Remember Joe, my old friend from Alpine? He would be 80 years old this year, but he’s long gone. Survived cancer long enough to see the truth [...]
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