Whatta palace you must've been born in

Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize! Wouldn't it be cool if there were a podcast of her (or someone with more dramatic flair) reading her work that you could download instead of a .pdf press release? Yeah, no kidding. Even better, check out the depressing fact that while "773 individuals and 19 organizations have been awarded the Nobel Prize," women have only accounted for 34 Nobel Prizes overall since 1901. At any rate, I enjoyed her piece "The Roads of London" in Granta 58, devoted to Ambition, an issue near and dear to my heart. Art critic Jerry Saltz once made the excellent point that women are entitled to make half of the bad art in the world. "Self-replicating... negative systems" make things like Girls Write Now, for which I am the vice chair of the board, all the more critical for life in the truly democratic society that I like to imagine most of us aspire to help create. Right now, I aspire to a magical jetlag-curing disco nap, and next week, to attending the awesome Girls Write Now party I helped plan. Please join us! As always, it's all for you.