Kate Moses read from Cakewalk, a passage about the experience of moving to Surgartown, PA as a child. Frances Lefkowitz read from To Have Not about how to switch places with your mother. Elizabeth Costello read from a novel in progress about a widow in Maryland in the late 1940s. John Somerville brought us Australian observations on life in Oakland, from his work-in-progress We are Them. Ebede Ndi read about bullying by pupils and teachers at a school in Cameroon, a chapter from his forthcoming memoir.