It’s as hard to introduce writers as it is to make movies about them. Here’s what they do: they sit and write things. Not exactly lives crammed with event. I can say this: Tracy K. Smith won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for her collection Life on Mars. She teaches at Princeton and lives in Brooklyn, which seems plenty eventful to me.

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  PERSON: her grandmother
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  PLACE: Restaurant Ocaso, Cuajinicuilapa, Mexico (up the road from here)
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  THING: the princess line

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  RANDY’S PLACE: 323 N 5th St., Reading, PA