Author: Dan White

My latest news is that Publisher’s Weekly ran a great review of Under The Stars that summed up the book far better than I could, being much too close to the material to sum it up in such an elegant way. And I just found out that the Huffington Post included Under The Stars in its list of six books that make Earth Day every day. And this just in: I found out that my Under The Stars book tour launch is going to take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz, right here in my hometown, on June 20. And please stay tuned for more updates. The official release date of the book is June 20. It will be available as a hardcover book (with my own illustrations) and also as an audiobook. It will, of course, also be available as an ebook.

Thanks –  I had no idea so many people would write in about this. If I use one of the suggested headers, or even riff on it in some way, that person will get some kind of ‘camping book’ care package as yet to be determined  and a big fat acknowledgment. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

hi everyone — here is the Facebook link to an ongoing ‘live” discussion about the pending title of my next book, which involves my camping adventures through history. Many of your suggestions are absolutely hilarious and I appreciate all of them.  Anyhow, all of you are giving me hope that I will — eventually — come up with a really good title for this book. I am also relieved — no, thrilled — to report that I have returned safely for the very last camping adventure associated with this book. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Hi everyone, and thank you so much for your continuing support and messages and commentary from all over the place including, most recently, Latvia. I appreciate it. Just wanted to ask for your patience. My year-end hibernation is coming up.  I am heading toward a summer turn-in deadline for my new book, the same nonfiction project that has taken me into the Everglades and into the High Peaks of the Adirondacks, and also into the Sierra Nevada. And yes, this is the same project that involved a bare-naked campout in mountain lion territory that you’ve probably heard about by now. Gives me the chills just thinking about that one. When the time is right, I’ll tell you all about that, too.  I am now getting myself ready for what could be the last research campout for this book — although there is a chance I’ll add yet another one in…

Our friend, the talented fiction writer Elizabeth McKenzie, the author of a well-received novel as well as a story collection, showed a short story to our writing group out in Santa Cruz early this fall. It gave me chills; reading it was a waking dream, and I could not stop thinking about it afterwards. Her story made me think about families and the way nostalgia and loss can warp the way we view the past. It also made me think about the way writers cannibalize memories. Anyway, after reading it, I thought, “wow, if only the world could see this story.” Well, now it can. The story, “The Savage Breast,” appears in this week’s New Yorker magazine. Congratulations, Lisa, and here is a nice review that just rolled in from the literary blogosphere. The author of this piece is Majnun Ben-David. And if you’re thinking that you’re about to hear more from this…

The talented arts writer (and fiction and nonfiction writer) Wallace Baine interviewed me recently about my nonfiction book-in-progress for Henry Holt & Co.  I’ve been keeping mum about a lot of this, and trying, (to quote a former roommate), “not to let the cat out of the bottle” so it was fun to talk about this with him. Here is the story.  This is not a camping guidebook — although I will share some ideas and suggestions — but an affectionate look into camping’s strange and beguiling past. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

If you are juggling several responsibilities and still trying to maintain an imaginative life, you may find some encouragement in my recent Q & A with Toni Morrison and Angela Davis. Thanks for reading, and sorry for the conflicting fonts.  Dan White: I would guess that even some of your most ardent fans don’t realize that you were an influential editor at Random House for 20 years. At the time, you were bringing out African American voices, including some strong feminist voices, to a wider audience.Toni Morrison: Well, I was determined to do that when I came there. There was a lot of activity going on, a lot of activism, and I thought, ‘I will publish these voices instead of marching.’ I thought it was my responsibility to publish African American and African writers who would otherwise not be published or not be published well, or edited well, and so I brought out…

Here is my recent interview about good and evil in literature, among other things. The interview also includes a few words from Angela Davis, who will be introducing Professor Morrison during her upcoming sold-out lecture in Santa Cruz this month. (you can find the same interview online right here.) By the way I am hoping to release a much more detailed and expanded version of this that has a Q and A format and I will let you know as soon as that happens … At 83, Toni Morrison has no plans to retire. At this point in her career, that kind of drive has little to do with unmet goals; the Nobel Prize winner has written 10 novels, a play, and many nonfiction pieces. Her body of work, including the novel Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, is already part of the literary canon. But Morrison, speaking by…

My trusty Mag-lite helped me make my way through the inky High Sierra darkness. Had a fine time up there with the exception of that final ascent, which made me quite woozy and a tad nauseous. Went to Dominican yesterday evening for treatment of minor frostbite but I should be just fine. This is the last camping trip for the book with the exception of the upcoming RV tour of the southwest.  By the way, I enjoyed meeting JMT hikers out there and I gave three of them a ride out from Onion Valley to Bishop, where we all shared a good meal at a Mexican restaurant and went out separate ways. More soon. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

–> When I was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University in 2007-8, I used to drive my rattletrap of a car back and forth between San Jose and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with The Grapes of Wrathaudiobook playing on my CD player.  I listened to the book twice in a row, all 21 hours and five minutes of it in 42 installments. As the story unfolded, I projected the action onto the land in front of me. While an amoral used-car salesman ripped off desperate “Okies” on their way to California, my own jalopy leaked oil on Highway 280. When Noah Joad disappeared, I imagined him lost in the foothills above Palo Alto. Twice in a row the lapsed preacher John Casy got his head bashed by thug cops while I crossed Church and 22nd Street in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. “You don’t know what you’re doing,”…