We are thrilled to say the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop has picked up a ton of new listeners, so, we're bringing you this bonus episode to say thank you! and welcome...we are ecstatic to have you! On this episode, author, columnist and critic Olivia Laing. Her most recent work, The Lonely City, is part memoir, part searching exploration of loneliness and artists whose outsider experience inspired their creativity, from seeming social gadfly Andy Warhol to the reclusive Henry Darger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, married co-authors Kevin Flynn & Rebecca Lavoie. Together, they have written four true crime books, most recently Dark Heart: A True Story of Sex, Manipulation, and Murder. They are also two of the eponymous crime writers behind the podcast Crime Writers On... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Kill 'em and leave" was James Brown's commandment to his band before every show...it's also the title of a biography of the soul legend, the latest by James McBride. The National Book Award winner is also a musician and composer. We sat down with him just before his appearance at the Writers in the Loft series at the Music Hall Loft in Portsmouth, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a writer, Joe Hill's family name gave him a leg up. Instead, he chose to create his own. We sat down with the best-selling author just before his appearance at Writers on a New England Stage at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH, where he was discussing his latest thriller, The Fireman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Richard Russo is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool - both were adapted into films starring Paul Newman. He returns to the fictional working class town of North Bath for his most recent novel, Everybody's Fool. We sat down with him on the darkened stage of an eerily empty theater before an extended interview at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A bona fide podcasting star, Aaron Mahnke has turned his love of the darker side of history into the spooky smash hit, Lore, which he researches and authors. He's also the author of four thrillers, a veteran of self-publishing, and handy with an 80s film reference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - and bonafide Charming British Lady - Helen Simonson lets us in on her writing process, her thoughts on sunshine, and the perils of HGTV. Her latest novel, set in 1914, is The Summer Before the War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Hall is now 87 and no longer writing poetry, a pursuit he calls "a young man's game" which takes "too much testosterone." But Hall, former Poet Laureate of both New Hampshire and the United States, long ago cemented his place in literary history. In this episode of the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop, Virginia and Sara traveled to Hall's home in Wilmot, NH, to speak to him - getting lost along the way, and, ultimately, finding themselves right at home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anyone who's ever been an awkward adolescent knows that for decades now, dog-eared copies of Judy Blume's books have been passed around school playgrounds like secrets, or read under the covers after lights out. Her best known books - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Deenie, Blubber, and Forever - offered young readers plain language and shame -free stories about periods, bullying, sexual urges and, even 'going all the way'. Judy Blume finally tells her own story with In the Unlikely Event. It’s set in 1952, when three planes crashed into her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. We sat down with her in the greenroom at the Music Hall in Portsmouth before a Writers on a New England Stage live event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Essayist, novelist, columnist, sportswriter and former ethicist for the New York Times Magazine, Chuck Klosterman has got a wildly original voice. That makes sense for a guy who's written about glam metal bands in North Dakota, or whether you should hire a detective to trail your spouse. He's author of several best-sellers including Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs and most recently But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kelly Link is one of a handful of writers to manage to be wondrous, fantastical and ominous at the same time. As Kirkus says, her work is “like Kafka hosting Saturday Night Live, mixing humor with existential dread.” Her most recent collection, Get in Trouble, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. She and her husband manage Small Beer Press. Photo © 2014 Sharona Jacobs Photography Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andre Dubus III's memoir Townie told the story of his violent childhood on the wrong side of the tracks. Writing was his way out, and he's made more than good, with multiple NYT bestsellers, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and an Oscar-nominated film adaptation (for his novel The House of Sand and Fog). And he gets out there, as a public speaker and writing instructor for graduate programs, seminars and retreats. We caught up with him at New Hampshire Writers’ Project's annual Writers’ Day. Photo of Virginia & Andre by Karen Kenney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The novelist, short story writer and essayist Cynthia Ozick's best known piece of writing is called The Shawl, a brutal, phantasmal story of a woman and two children marching to a Nazi concentration camp. The Holocaust and Jewish identity are recurring topics in Ozick's fiction and criticism. Growing up in the Bronx, she was called Christ-killer, and humiliated for not singing Christmas carols at school. Now 88, her 7th volume of criticism, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, And Other Literary Essays, was published recently, in July 2016. Ozick's last public reading was 6 years ago, but, happily, we got her on the phone from her home in Westchester County, New York. Photo: Ric Kallaher Music: Podington Bear Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Legal decisions are rarely read for pleasure. And though read and re-read and excerpted and quoted, they are not always quotable. Clocking in at an average of just under 5000 words, they can sound jargony, pompous and bone-dry in the wrong hands. Today's 10-Minute Writers Workshop asks an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States about what goes into writing an opinion. Justice Stephen Breyer was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1994 and is an exuberant advocate for participatory democracy, animated explainer of the reasoning behind decisions and author of several books. I spoke with Justice Breyer in the green room at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, just before talking with him about his most recent, The Court and the World - American Law and the New Global Realities for Writers On A New England Stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of the 10-Minute Writer’s Workshop, singer-songwriter, musician and novelist Josh Ritter – who might say writer first, musician second. It was a song that spun into his 2011 novel Bright's Passage. Josh Ritter’s songs draw deeply from the narrative traditions of American and Scottish folk music he studied after dropping out of the neuroscience program at Oberlin. They're little stories of character and place...wild prairies, snake oil salesman, teenage lust, and adults running out of road. Josh describes his most recent album Sermon on the Rocks as “messianic oracular honky-tonk.” We caught up with him at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire, the day it was announced that Bob Dylan would be rewarded the Nobel Prize. So we focused on songwriting... let’s call this the 10-Minute Songwriter’s Workshop. Music: Josh Ritter, "Henrietta, Indiana" (used with permission) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s our 30th episode, this time with the phenomenally successful Jodi Picoult. Small Great Things is her 24th novel - and the ninth straight to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. If Picoult has a "thing" it's writing about thorny ethical issues from the perspective of multiple characters...and a twisty ending! She's written in the voice of suicidal teens, rape victims, a school shooter…but until now, never as a black character and never directly confronting race, privilege and inequity - which most people avoid talking about. We caught up with her in the green room at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire before Writers on a New England Stage. Music: “Many Hands” by Poddington Bear Photo: David J. Murray, cleareyephoto.com We are proud to be sponsored by Blue Apron. To receive a free week of meals, visit http://blueapron.com/10minute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A National Book Award winner, Pulitzer-Prize nominee, Guggenheim fellow, and winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant, Colson Whitehead's new book, The Underground Railroad, was one of the most anticipated works of fiction this year. Virginia caught up with him backstage at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire before a reading with novelist Ben Winters hosted of Gibson’s Bookstore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom Gauld -- a cartoonist, illustrator of comics and covers for the New Yorker and The Believer. His weekly cartoon about the arts for The Guardian newspaper is a wry, often deadpan favorite among writers. He is extremely prolific, author of more than a dozen books of comics, including You're Just Jealous of My Jetpack and most recently Mooncop. The lunar cop is perfectly Gauldian character - doesn't say much, spends a lot of time walking the barren landscape, is pretty lonesome and quaint. Virginia met with Tom before his talk at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just an hour's drive from our studio. The challenge was finding a quiet spot to record in Harvard square...at rush hour. Music: "Feeding Pigeons" - Poddington Bear Ad Music: "Joy in the Restaurant" - David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Irish author Emma Donoghue may be best known for Room, her novel written in the voice of a young boy confined with his mother in a single room. It was nominated for a Man Booker prize and made into an Oscar-winning film, for which she wrote the screenplay. Her most recent novel is The Wonder, about a "fasting girl" in 1850s Ireland. Music: Podington Bear - "Evenhanded" Ad Music: David Szesztay - "Joy in the Restaurant" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'In Maine, when we say something is "wicked good" – we really mean it.' That's how LL Bean describes their Wicked Good Slippers, and how we describe Jeff Ryan, who for decades wrote Bean's catalog copy. We spoke to him about finding the story in everyday objects and the tricks of the trade when it comes to copy writing. Jeff Ryan is also the author of Appalachian Odyssey, a memoir of hiking the Appalachian Trail, bit by bit, over 28 years. Episode music: "Auld Lang Syne" by Podington Bear Credit music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jonathan Lethem is the best-selling author of Gun, with Occasional Music, Fortress of Solitude, and other novels, including the Naitonal Book Critics' Circle award-winning Motherless Brooklyn. He's known for reanimating and remixing genres - hard-boiled crime novels, post-apocalyptic science fiction, superhero comics and even technicolor westerns. His most recent novel is called A Gambler's Anatomy. It's about a high-stakes competitive backgammon player and con artist - a character who, like Lethem, was raised in the bohemian Brooklyn of the 1970s. Episode music: "Crate Diggin" by Ari de Niro Ad music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Caitlin Moran is the best-selling author of How to Be a Woman, Moranthology, and columnist for the Times of London. She and her sister developed and write 'raised by wolves" --a British television series loosely based on their experience in a family of ten growing up in a tiny subsidized flat in the English midlands. She is also a mother of two, an unapologetic feminist, and really, really funny. Caitlin Moran is now out with Moranifesto, her second collection of columns and essays. The Harvard Book Store sponsored her event at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We caught up with her before she went on stage. She was warm and playful and not at all anxious about going on stage - or writing. Episode Music: "American Weirdos" by Hurry Up Ad Music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ottessa Moshfegh says she writes to explore why people do weird things. The daughter of a Croatian mother and Iranian father, she was a serious piano student who knew she didn't want to be a pianist when she felt the call to write - and not just write, but be bold. We spoke to her before her reading at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. Episode Music: Kevin MacLeod, "Trio for Piano, Violin and Viola" Credit Music: Uncanny Valleys, "Curious or Disconcerting" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Victoria Schwab... VE Schwab... V... the author's name depends on her audience, which, like the dark worlds she builds, is a well-thought out design. Ms. Schwab, we'll say, burst onto the scene in 2011 with The Near Witch. A dozen books later, adult, young adult and middle grade readers have followed her into supernatural worlds, sinister scenarios and richly formed fantasy worlds. A self-described pagan, Victoria managed to survive a happy, independent childhood, with a morbid streak. "I definitely hung my teddy bears from the stair railing, execution-style,” she told Book Page. That slightly twisted imagination has served her well, and she continues to build speculative worlds and cutthroat characters that probe the human capacity to be monstrous to each other - and to the natural world. Her newest novel, A Conjuring of Light, is part three and the culmination of the Shades of Magic fantasy series. We reached her at her home in Nashville via Skype. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lindy West, columnist for The Guardian, and author of How to be a Person and Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Lindy writes about feminism, social justice, body image, pop culture and, lately, politics. She's a funny and original thinker, and brave. She's been a contributor on several memorable episodes of This American Life - one on "coming out" as fat, another about confronting an internet troll, one of hundreds who'd harassed her online. She's got a bunch of balls in the air - TV and movie projects, an idea for a podcast - but we honed in on the demands of being a columnist. Episode music by Ari de Niro Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ben Winters is a little incomprehensible. Not his output, which is consistently great, but his wild imagination and range. He's a teacher, a playwright, an Edgar and Phillip K. Dick Award-winning novelist, he's written children's books, an existential detective series and landed a New York Times bestseller with the Jane Austen meets the kraken mash-up, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. His most recent novel, Underground Airlines, imagines an alternative American history - and present. The civil war never happened, and slavery is legal in four southern states under protection of the Constitution. Underground Airlines is an ingenious work of speculative fiction that at times seems chillingly plausible. It landed on several top ten lists in 2016...from Fresh Air contributor Maureen Corrigan to the BBC. We caught up with him at the Capital Center for the Arts in Concord, NH before interviewing him and The Underground Railroad author, Colson Whitehead. Episode music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tana French is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Dublin Murder Squad series. The newest, called The Trespasser, is the sixth in the best-selling, habit-forming series. "It’s taken for granted that anybody who’s read one [Tana French novel] will very shortly have read them all,” wrote Laura Miller in the New Yorker. French wrote her debut novel, In The Woods, in the long stretches between parts as a stage actress in Dublin. That theatrical training - understanding people from the inside out - may well be the edge that sets her books apart from other mysteries and police procedurals. The search for the killer becomes entangled with a search for the self, or as Miller put it, "in most crime fiction, the central mystery is who is the murderer? In French’s novels, it’s who is the detective?” Music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Scalzi, the Hugo Award-winning author of science fiction both serious and less-so and an internet star from way, way back. He is former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, perhaps best known for his Old Man's War series, his blog “Whatever,” and his novel Redshirts, which is currently being developed for television. He joined us in the NHPR studios while on tour for The Collapsing Empire, the first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anita Shreve had a small, but devoted following as a literary author when her second novel, The Pilot's Wife was named an Oprah Book Club pick. The recognition propelled her into a New York Times bestselling novelist. Two days after her 18th novel, The Stars Are Fire, was released, she canceled her extensive book tour, later writing on her Facebook page that she would be undergoing chemotherapy. This most recent novel uses wildfires that raged through coastal Maine in 1947 as the backdrop for the story of one woman’s extraordinary resilience. Music by Tyler Gibbons Ad Music by Uncanny Valleys Find Anita Shreve on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anitashreve/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Krista Tippett is probably best known as the host & creator of the public radio program On Being. But she's also the author of three books that pull from her decades of interviews with a broad variety of thinkers and seekers, exploring the intersections between spirituality, science, and living. The most recent is called Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery & Art of Living. We spoke to her backstage at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH before a Writers on a New England Stage event. Music: Podington Bear - "Daydreamer" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ian Rankin is best known for two characters: Inspector John Rebus, the protagonist of now 21 mystery novels, and the city of Edinburgh, whose dark corners come alive in Rankin’s hands. Rebus made his debut in the 1987 crime novel Knots & Crosses. In Rankin’s newest novel - Rather Be the Devil - a retired Rebus returns to a case that has haunted him for decades. Episode music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Author, outspoken vegetarian, social media abstainer and writing teacher Jonathan Safran Foer is author of three novels: Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am, which follows four generations of a Jewish family grappling with identity, connection and disaster. His nonfiction book about factory farming, Eating Animals, was also a New York Times best-seller. Episode music by Broke For Free Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Designated Doctor 101 Workshop

Designated Doctor Musculoskeletal Examination Workshop

Designated Doctor 101 Workshop

Honeywell, along with tech partners, will take visitors on a first-hand journey through the tech-enabled retail setting at EuroShop, the retail trade fair, 26th February – 3rd March, in Düsseldorf, Germany.

It has recently emerged that consumer habits amongst Gen Z are changing, with many now turning to social media for retail therapy. Weighing in on this growing phenomenon of social media shopping, Nick Drewe, founder of the online discount platform Wethrift, offers his insights:

MandM, the online retailer specialising in discounted fashion, sports and outdoor brands, has launched the first of a series of live shopping events on Facebook and Instagram in collaboration with Sprii.

The 2024 festive period could be a tricky one for retailers as shoppers hunt down the best deals amidst an ongoing cost of living crisis and focus the majority of their bargain hunting on the Black Friday weekend.

Manhattan Associates Inc has announced that PacSun, the specialty retailer of emerging youth brands and trending fashion, has selected Manhattan Active Point of Sale to enhance its omnichannel sales strategy and deliver a seamless, unified customer shopping experience.

By Jeremy Landau, freelance writer.

It’s no secret that when your business begins to grow, you will need to add staff to accommodate the increased sales and other demands on store operations. This tends to become more complex as your business gets larger, and staff roles and responsibilities may need to be diversified and identified, so everyone knows what they should be doing.

SUZOHAPP – a global market leader of software and hardware payment management solutions – will be exhibiting at EuroShop, the world’s largest retail trade fair from February 16-20 in Dusseldorf, Germany.On display at booth #6A75 will be the market leading CashComplete™ line of payment management solutions.

Nearly two-thirds of shoppers step into a store without a specific purchase in mind, looking to be inspired by retailers who can craft the ideal ambience through digital screens and interactive kiosks. 

"Tell me the numbers, I'll take care of the politics." Shashi Nambisan, director of the Transportation Research Center (TRC) at UNLV, recalled a pivotal discussion in the early 1990s with then-County Commissioner Bruce L. Woodbury about the transportation needs of a region on the precipice of substantial growth.

[Culture] :
J-Hope of K-pop sensation BTS will complete his 18 months of mandatory military service and be discharged from the Army on Thursday.  The singer’s agency, BigHit Music, revealed the date on Monday in the group’s fan community platform, saying no event will be held to mark the occasion while urging ...

[more...]

[Culture] :
BTS member J-Hope completed his 18-month military service on Thursday. Upon being discharged earlier in the morning, J-Hope appeared at the gate of the 36th Infantry Division's Recruit Training Center in Wonju, Gangwon Province, and thanked the group's fandom, ARMY, saying he was able to complete his ...

[more...]

[Culture] :
Nobel Prize-winning author Han Kang hopes to write three more books over the next six years. Han made the remarks Thursday as she accepted the Pony Chung Innovation Prize at an award ceremony organized by the Pony Chung Foundation. The 53-year-old author, who turns 54 next month, said ages 50 to 60 are ...

[more...]

Single crystals of tricadmium orthophosphate, Cd3(PO4)2, have been synthesized successfully by the hydro­thermal route, while its powder form was obtained by a solid-solid process. The corresponding crystal structure was determined using X-ray diffraction data in the monoclinic space group P21/n. The crystal structure consists of Cd2O8 or Cd2O10 dimers linked together by PO4 tetra­hedra through sharing vertices or edges. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the morphology and to confirm the chemical composition of the synthesized powder. Infrared analysis corroborates the presence of isolated phosphate tetra­hedrons in the structure. UV–Visible studies showed an absorbance peak at 289 nm and a band gap energy of 3.85 eV, as determined by the Kubelka–Munk model.

William Jackson Harper and Aya Cash in “We Broke Up.”; Credit: Vertical Entertainment

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.