I met Sharon one Saturday morning in late September at Writer House in Charlottesville, Virginia after dropping a writer off at the train station who had been at Porches writing retreat. We talked about Playing With Dynamite, a memoir about her father who died in a mysterious and bizarre accident when she was seven. Sharon: It’s cool to be talking to you because I was at Porches when I made the final edits on the book. It was my last opportunity to make any changes so it felt like it was high stakes and I … Continue reading An Interview with author Sharon Harrigan→
An essay on creative process by Rachel E. Diken The Open Road had long been a solace to me, until a highway crash many years ago where faulty brakes caused a high-speed tumbling wreck. I was moving from the Northeast to New Orleans, so the vehicle was packed with everything I owned: primarily, a dozen backpacks full of the poems, essays, and notebooks documenting my travels. As I was loaded into the ambulance, I saw my pages of writing floating through the air, carried away by the wind over the highway. The experience marked a … Continue reading When Called, Say Yes→
I am but a mouthful of sweet air – W.B. Yeats I take special pleasure in sitting outdoors. There’s displeasure, too, in the form of bugs and mercurial weather that I can’t control, but mostly I take pleasure. The smells, the sounds, the constant dramas played out in the flight of birds, bees, and butterflies, the feel of the grass on my bare feet and the breeze on my skin—they all combine to make life outdoors feel richer and more immediate. Outdoors, food tastes better. Maybe it’s the relaxed atmosphere around the picnic table or … Continue reading Sitting Out by David Roach→
At 7:40am, the streets of downtown Charlottesville are eerily quiet. If not for the barricades, it would be hard to believe these streets will soon teem with people: busloads of Nazis come for the Unite the Right rally, and counter-protesters, like us. Some people told us to stay away this morning. Terry Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, where I teach in the German Department, urged us not to risk getting caught in the violence. But as a Jewish Germanist, I know too well what happens when you don’t stand up to Nazis. Besides, … Continue reading What I Saw in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017 by Cora Schenberg→
by Mary Carroll-Hackett I move too fast. Always have. I talk fast, walk fast, read quickly, even had to be taught as a child to slow down while eating, Mama saying things like It’s not a race, Mary, or You know no one’s coming to take that away from you. I was the child she had to keep by the hand if she were to keep me from running too far ahead in stores, racing my way up stairs and escalators, or headlong down them. Sometimes that speed has worked to my advantage, later, … Continue reading “Girl, I Hear You’re Fast” Barry Hannah, Old Blue and the Most Valuable Writing Lesson I’ve Ever Learned→
by Laura Marello Many people knew him better and longer. Many can say more articulate things about his work. I always loved him so much. I remember many details of our ten months at the Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown. For those ten months, I lived two doors down from Denis Johnson in Provincetown in 1981-82 when we were both writing fellows there. Tama Janowitz lived between us. I remember so much about it. He had not yet published his first book. He did so that spring. When I first met him, he toasted … Continue reading Remembering Denis Johnson→
I did the same thing in the first two minutes upon meeting her for the first time that I did while sitting with a friend of more than 20 years two days before. I cried. I felt humbled and felt the tears well up, and I let them stay. I didn’t wipe my eyes. I didn’t worry about my mascara smudging or my nose running. I said what I felt: that I was honored to have met her. And then I thanked her for her service to our country. I met Mrs. Kahn, the mother … Continue reading Meeting Mrs. Kahn→
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 read our own work and we were not to look at the text. A writer named Leslie began to read mine. As she read, I experienced something I had never felt before about one of my characters. It was Michael, my brother. It was as if I didn’t know him, had never known him and … Continue reading A Brother’s Revenge→
The dogs at Chicago’s Belly Shack are the best. In the bare, post-industrial setting of this diner beneath the rumbling tracks of the L, you can get a Belly Dog loaded with egg noodles and pickled green papaya. Add a little mustard and a side of Togarashi fries and you’ve got the makings of a beautiful episode of indigestion. Which I got. And which propelled me into a local 7-11 for some Tums on my way to the funky independent bookstore in Wicker Park. I was waiting on a plane to land at midnight, bringing … Continue reading Despite What Beer May Come→
When I returned home from the grocery store a few weeks ago, in the Boonsboro neighborhood of Lynchburg, I looked up to see that my next-door neighbors’ shutters had been removed from the front façade of their house, leaving the darker green older paint exposed in the shutter area, and the lighter green, newer paint around it, creating a faux shutter phenomenon. It looks good. We don’t really need shutters, I realized. We can have faux shutters, using the old paint behind the shutters to create the illusion. In the last decade, commerce has exploded … Continue reading The Faux Phenomenon by Laura Marello→
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