The recent changes at Running Times open exciting opportunities for my kind of writing, which is always aimed at runners who are willing to think about running in ways other than how-to advice on diet or equipment. Ideas are under discussion for some major features on history and issues.

A new book-length collection of my running writing is overdue; a kind of “Heroes and Sparrows 2.” Perhaps two books. I’m working on selection and structure.

In literature, I have an essay in a major book on Samuel Butler due to appear this year:

Samuel Butler, Victorian against the Grain: a Critical Overview, edited by Jim Paradis. University of Toronto Press.

My contribution, which opens the book, is “From Canterbury Settlement to Erewhon: Butler and Antipodean Counterpoint.”

Long entries on Butler and Julius Vogel are also due to appear in a Dictionary of Literary Biography, New Zealand Volume 1.

I’ve also done a good deal of work for a book derived from the courses “Journalism and Literature,” to be written in conjunction with my friend and co-teacher of those courses, Stephen Harris, if University of New England , NSW, Australia .