This time it was Rob’s turn. I have interviewed Rob Bell twice — once for a magazine a long time ago, and again in 2011 for our Writer’s Symposium By The Sea, just as his…
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My new book “Talk To Me: How To Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like A Pro” just came out from HarperCollins, and it’s getting some good response! It’s both a practical…
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I talked to Eugene Peterson on the phone earlier this year, inviting him to an event I was trying to organize in San Diego. I asked him if he’d be willing to come. “No,” he…
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The book I thought I was writing last year was a handbook for writers. But when I submitted it to publishers, one editor responded by saying, “Why aren’t you writing a book about interviewing? You…
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She is the worldwide symbol of selfless service, so when I was given the chance to attend the ceremonies regarding her canonization in Rome, I went for it. No one does pageantry like the Vatican….
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Here’s how a comment can change a life. I was 19, home from college one summer, and volunteering at a youth camp for a week. The camp director put me in charge of entertainment…
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This past spring we had Nikki Giovanni, the poet who helped usher in the Black Arts movement in the 1960s, at our Writer’s Symposium By The Sea. She read some of her poems, then talked…
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This essay of mine appeared recently on Donald Miller’s Storyline Blog. It was a voice out of the wilderness. I was on a path in the mountains in Haiti recently, walking next to a…
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Have you ever had a conversation that went far deeper than the words spoken or an experience where you felt you had participated in something sacred? Although these situations may seem unexplainable, they are reminders…
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Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s book Shadow of the Wind was chosen as the One Book San Diego read for 2015. In was my privilege to interview Zafon downtown at the San Diego Public Library.