Last year, professor and poet Lorenzo Thomas of the University of Houston—Downtown informed me that two of my novels, Mumbo Jumbo and Reckless Eyeballing, would be subjects of a panel during the 110th annual convention …

Sefior Mateo: Back in Boy Scouts, we had this ongoing debate about why exactly bugs hated bug repellent. Some claimed it was the smell. Others claimed it was the taste. Still others that it created …

The names of quilts are like children’s games that are played with a loop of string: Feathered World without End, Hands All Around, Courthouse Steps, Tumbling Blocks, Joseph’s Coat. Some quilters, including Reggie, know the names at a glance.

Now painted a deep, electric blue-green with bright white trim, the shabby clapboard structure is partly uninhabitable and deserted, though a beauty parlor on the ground floor remains in business and pays its rent to the city.

Hello, Straight: I'd like you to find a legal reference to what I think/believe/have been told. When a person is sentenced in the U.S. to be in jail for more than one year, automatically that …

Oh, Great Enlightened One: Who, pray tell, invented the zero? I have heard, through the movie Stand and Deliver, that the Mayans invented it. Several engineers I work with claim that the zero is Arabic. …

A little-known fact: Jackson Browne was once a member of the Velvet Underground. Not really. But not far off. I have a correspondent in Tokyo, a magazine editor, who tells me that the current crop …