Portland author Phillip Hoose has been nominated for a National Book Award for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The book, which tells the story of a young civil-rights heroine, is nominated in the Young People's Literature category, where it's up against just four others (more than 250 were submitted for consideration).

Congrats, Phil!

Local author Hannah Holmes, whose natural history of humans, The Well-Dressed Ape (Random House), I reviewed back in January, is on a "viral campaign" to help market her book. I showed you the first installment of her effort in February, and now, just in time for St. Patrick's Day, she's out with another clip of video from a reading.

So, apparently recovering from bird flu makes me an insomniac. Awesome!! Around 3 a.m., I pulled out my Selected Poems of Anne Sexton (hey, if you're going to be miserable, might as well go all the way, right?) After reading some uterus/madness/Freudian shit for a while, I decided to (re?) read the intro by editors Diane Wood Middlebrook and Diana Hume George.