If I were to ask you, “Don’t you just love sunsets?”, your answer “Duh, who doesn’t? What a cliché!” would be apt. But what if I ask you, “Why do you like sunsets”? What would your answer be then? Yes, they

The Old Man and the Second Language We can learn a new language at any age (Instagram post). I first read Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea when I was a teenager. I still remember how moved and inspired I was

The wood that is the creative process of a writer (Instagram post). When I admire a painting or a sculpture, I am first taken by its whole image, whether it is the powerful body of Hercules as he battles the Nemean lion

Aleko's Adventures in Wonderland The joys of reading . . . (Instagram post) On a Sunday afternoon, Aleko walked to the bookshelf in the living room and pulled a large leather-bound book. He skipped over to the couch and poked his father

This is the only time when the national soccer teams from Bulgaria and Uruguay have played against each other. (Instagram post) The opera, the opera, we’re going to the opera. Forget football, we’re going to the opera. . . These are the

Much ado about something Albena Black Sea resort, Bulgaria (Instagram post) Back in the day in communist Bulgaria, almost everyone spent their summer vacations on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. International travel was uncommon and very difficult to achieve (i.e., generally not

Montevideo, Uruguay (Instagram post) I have a confession to make. I’ve never been to Uruguay, yet I set a novel in its capital city, Montevideo. As a social scientist, this is discombobulating, to say the least. We are not supposed to

A tale of two spectra Once upon a time, there was a fair and plucky maiden. Her name is Jill Petersen, and she is a former graduate student of mine. She had taken my course on bilingual language development. She had

The old house in a small Bulgarian village where my father grew up (Instagram post). Creative writing is a solitary process. But it’s a beautiful state of being. You’re all by yourself, with your own thoughts, in your fictional realm, accompanied

That is not the question This is Olivia, and she will be bilingual! At 15 months, the few words that Olivia says are in Mandarin Chinese, but she prefers her books to be in English. She is being raised in a Mandarin-speaking