This past week I had an unusual experience in a memoir class. Several of us had turned in an excerpt to be critiqued during class. The workshop leader asked another writer to read my excerpt aloud. We were not to […]

She felt the first loose tooth at 5am on Tuesday. A back tooth on the lower left side, her wisdom tooth? She felt it the moment she woke up, lying in bed while the monitor screamed in her ear.

She […]

Writing a story from a foreign or external perspective offers not only the reward of expanding your own awareness about people but can also lead to empathy for others that you may not have had before. To write […]

Stephanie Gross was intrigued early by pictures and their stories. “I spent a lot of time as a kid looking at pictures,” she says. ”My mom was a docent at the National Gallery and she used to walk me thr […]

The squeaky snow in Indiana reminds me of growing up in Poland. So does the temperature, seven degrees Fahrenheit. I’m glad it’s not seventy and sunny. Better days for sitting down and writing rarely come […]

Full disclosure: I didn’t ask Erika Raskin* to be this month’s interviewee until after she had decided on the story I had submitted. That being said, once she had reached her decision (a yes, by the way!), I […]

The Blue Shirt
As the doors close on 2016 we may find ourselves casting a backward glance, not only on the past year but back over our entire life as well, especially if we’ve reached a certain age. For many of u […]

Mount Fuji
 
My friend always wanted to see the mountain
with its eternal snow, but she never
crossed the ocean to Japan. Instead,
she bought a small reproduction
of Hokusai’s “Boy Viewing Mount Fuji […]

Donald Trump said he would make America great again if he became president. Now, as his inauguration approaches, each news cycle brings further proof that if he succeeds on his own terms, the moral c […]