It’s been a mental boon being welcomed as a Visiting Scholar at Hogwarts the University of Oxford’s Wolfson College, home to its Centre for Life-Writing. The program was founded by Dame Hermione Lee, whose groundbreaking biography of Virginia Woolf I often consulted while writing Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, wondering “How did she *do* that?” (Painters sit in museums tracing the brushstrokes of Masters; writers pull books from the shelf.) My time in the UK has been spent researching a book about the scandalous Victorian London trial of a woman who willfully published a birth control pamphlet, and defended herself before the Crown on charges of obscenity.

In other news, the galleys/Advanced Reading Copies of Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet have arrived, and the design and printing would make the book’s namesake proud. If you or anyone you know would like a copy for review, please send me an email.