Letters

Chief Executive Officer

The Children's Rights Council

Editor's Note

John Irving, author of Until I Find You , has called our attention to his previous associations with Book World's reviewer of that book, Marianne Wiggins (July 10). That contact, which we have now corroborated, should have disqualified her as a reviewer; our signed agreements with reviewers spell out our conflict-of-interest rules carefully ("if you have had any contact, friendly or otherwise, with the author of this book . . . or if there is any possibility of an appearance of a conflict of interest in the assignment of this review to you, please let Book World know immediately"). Had we known that Irving had dedicated one of his earlier novels to Marianne Wiggins's ex-husband, Salman Rushdie, and had we known that Irving and Wiggins had socialized with each other in the past, we would not have made the assignment. We apologize to our readers for this misstep.

We welcome letters. Send them--no more than 200 words, please--along with your full name, address and telephone (we will not publish the last two) to bwletters@washpost.com or to Book World Editor, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity, and we regret that, due to the volume of letters we receive, we cannot answer them all.