I live in a town where the writer who cranks it out rakes it in. I can’t get past page three in any of John Grisham’s books before I give up. Those books are page-turners though, you betcha, the whole who […]

Over the past year, I watched Mike, one of my best friends, die of a brain tumor. In the midst of this misery, I came to think about things that make life worth living. Foremost is love, of course, but after that […]

All right then. I get it.

The San Souci Motel is called the San Soo-chee, not the Sahn Soo-cee. People in Buckroe Beach, Virginia, do not go in for Frenchification. At least according to my husband’s family, w […]

I’ve encountered many different roads to take on my quest to develop my style as a poet. Sometimes I’ve moved forward and sometimes I’ve stayed still, uncomfortable with change. I expect this has been the case […]

One day I decided I wanted to write a short story with a sex scene in it. I decided this for two reasons. One, first and foremost, I had read a short story by my sister’s high school boyfriend and he e […]

                      Balancing Craft and Business…

Sharyn McCrumb, known for her Appalachian “ballad” novels, including The New York Times best sellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley, The Ballad of F […]

I was a typical child of Depression-era parents—left to fend for myself as long as I didn’t bring unwanted attention to my respectable, Southern family.

I, like most of my age group, was what I call a sel […]

You’re watching a show, and suddenly it happens: the story cuts to a scene of a naked woman about to take a shower. Her breasts — huge and gravity-defying — jiggle and roll as she enters the shower stall, […]

I have always thought of myself as being by nature a slow kind of person. I am, and always have been, slow in the morning to awaken to the day and slow in the evening to let go of it, though my habits are changing […]

Juliet Da Luiso, also known as Judy Longley when writing poems,

studies abstract oil painting with Jean Sampson at Macguffey Art Center.

Juliet talks about her painting:

“Poetry has consumed my […]

Ben had wanted to leave earlier but his brother couldn’t take any more time off. Ben glanced at Willy, who was leaning against the passenger-side door, smoking like a chimney.

“Can we stop for food?” Willy […]

Rick Weaver seems an artist equally interested in what can and cannot be seen. Whether working with paint brushes, carving tools or modeling clay, his creations blend the subject at hand with what he […]

When I was in college there was this bar that had bouncers who took turns playing St. Peter. They stood outside the door going:

You.
You.
You.
Not you.

The whole idea was so ghastly to me (for a […]

The day Septima left, she said, “I believe I am a promise you are tired of keeping.” Minutes before, Turk had pitched a bottle of beer at her. He had missed, but only barely. Green glass and yellow ale spl […]

 
                                            LOOK3…
 
June 10-13th all eyes will be on LOOK3, Charlottesville’s stellar photography festival now in its seventh year. The town will host numerous famous […]

There is a saying that if you don’t know what you’re doing, ask your neighbors. Once upon a time when I first moved to Nelson County, Virginia, and knew no one, I experienced an untethered queasy feeling of not […]

At the old house, Leslie had walked to school. Here, the school was closer, but she had to take the bus. The old house had been on the outskirts of a smaller town, not a former murder capital of the world. […]

I move around a lot — not kinetically, but like a hermit crab from home to home. And as a consequence, my Facebook account has become cluttered with groups of friends from all the various cities where I have […]

Birds in residence are the stuff of metaphors and dreams for New York City artist Dina Brodsky.

Mysterious feathered fowl — from crows to blue jays — land in unexpected interiors, their res […]

Whenever I run into Lisa Russ Spaar she seems scarcely to have aged since I first met her, eons ago, in Gregory Orr’s graduate poetry workshop at the University of Virginia. Tall and lithe, with long blonde h […]