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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I recently interviewed my friend, Sue Eisenfeld, about her creative nonfiction writing, and it turns out she’s taught a range of courses and workshops at Johns Hopkins University in creative nonfiction. She’s […]

I’ve kept an idea journal for as long as I can remember. Whenever a word, sentence or story idea strikes my fancy, I jot it down and date the entry.

One day, I thumbed through the pages, noticing dates on e […]

Wedding in Richmond
 

they’re roasting a pig at Tuckahoe Plantation
crowds gather on the grounds
where little Thomas Jefferson once lived
sweet jasmine tangles in the garden
banjos play on the […]