I am not a poet. I would never claim to be. If writing were music, I prefer to play conductor to soloist. My fiction would be a symphony, not a piece for solo piano. But the craft of a prose writer also involves cadences, subtle…

A recent op-ed in the New York Times tells us that modern research dispels the myth of genius. Apparently genius can be nurtured with the right set of circumstances, the right timing and mentoring. I find it interesting that the example given is a young…