Novelist Elizabeth Benedict (left) dropped us a line saying she'd been turned on to GalleyCat by fellow author M.J. Rose, who turns out to be "my long lost but recently found high school pal." She also wanted to let us know about how an assignment to review The Last of Her Kind for the NYTBR back in January led to a new friendship with Sigrid Nunez, who like Benedict went to Barnard. During a recent conversation at McNally Robinson, Benedict reports, "we talked about our writing teacher at Barnard, literary luminary Elizabeth Hardwick, about writing workshops back in the day when students brought in a single paragraph to be critiqued, about surviving the writer's life, about editors, publishers, beginnings, middles, and despair." An MP3 of that talk is available on Benedict's website; she's also looking for other former students of Hardwick with memories to share.