In January 2018, I took what I thought was a one month’s retreat from Facebook. I’d been through a lot of changes. My father had died in December 2017 after a difficult year in which I’d spent in total three months in England being with him, flying back and forth from Singapore six times; I’d still been teaching at the National University of Singapore, researching, struggling with my permanent resident

In the last few weeks I’ve read all of Nella Larsen’s fiction. This isn’t as impressive as it sounds – Charles Larson’s edited Complete Fiction collection of Larsen’s works contains only three short stories, none of which are her best work, and the two short novels Quicksand and Passing. It’s a slim volume, not much thicker in total than many literary novels. I came to Larsen by a circuitous route,

Before applying for my Masters in Counselling Psychology, I had to take several undergraduate prerequisites in Psychology and related subjects. I remember how nervous I felt teaching my first undergraduate course, Freshman Composition, at the University of Florida in 1984, only a few years older than most of my students and younger than several of them. After a time, being a teacher and university level became second nature, and my