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 […]

Dazzling Dinoflagellates
 
We gather when the moon is hidden
in earth shadow, stand in a group to hear facts,
take advice, don life jackets that cover our lungs,
our hearts. We drive toward a cove at […]

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. A […]

Art History
 
“A book ‘manuscript’ should be understood as a form of sacred space: a temple in microcosm, not only imbued with divine presence but also layered with the memories of many generations of us […]

After I attended the Midwest Writers Workshop this summer, I made a vow to write about it. I had gone to other writing conferences, but this one felt different. Warmer, helpful. Permanent. As a dutiful outreach […]

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 ho […]

Here are the things I’ve always found challenging:

Organization

Instructions (written, spoken and pictorial)

Maps (obviously)

Sciencey things

Paying attention

The good news about these l […]

The woman walking into the lobby wore a brown skirt, white tights, and a pair of clogs. Her name was Shellay—she-lay—and she had a Polish last name that was hard to pronounce. She said she was a librarian and had […]

Water
 
Not all water is silk,
not a curtain closed
against a mountain.
Not every rivulet runs
to a river. Not every
rainstorm beats fists
against the pavement
or hammers umbrellas.
It doesn’t even ta […]

After training as a journalist and spending years covering stories all over the world, I returned to my family home in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C. and began to listen in a deeper […]

TO: Right Brain
FROM: Me
SUBJECT: Annual Evaluation

Your full Annual Evaluation Report will be sent shortly but I want to go over some of the highlights briefly. First of all, thank you for finally returning […]

Her car was still sprinkled with debris from her recent move to the city. A misshapen yoga mat, tea towels, her boyfriend’s guitar pedals, a bedside lamp; the persisting clutter of merging lives. Wishing she’d tak […]

“Mother?” Plump, magnified, younger lips open and close. “Mother?”

How many years must she hear it? Mother Mother Mother. How many years already? The lips are those of a luminous fish suspended in water w […]

Have you sold a novel for a seven-figure advance? Yes? Then this post is not for you.

Still here? Skedaddle. Go write something. Yes? Okay.

Now that we’re all alone, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is […]

I often use this poem, The Summer Day by Mary Oliver, in my poetry workshops to demonstrate the importance of paying attention in the writing of poems:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black […]

Bobbie Ellen leaned against the wall of the arcade at Minnow Lake Campground and squinted at Nick Baker. The first wave of a thick Oklahoma summer had sent her inside with the rest of the gang, where the dark room […]

“I passed through Bologna once on the way to…” That’s how my favorite Italian city is usually featured in travel narratives. Tourists know its train station, a surprisingly modest building considering how m […]