I wrote these poems to capture and preserve real events. They depict shifts from isolation and loss to connection and love—the dance of relationships in unexpected places, with unexpected dance pa […]

I recognize that I may be a tad more sensitive to the prospect of police state behavior than the average Jo but I come by this extra helping of unease naturally. Because of his liberal politics my dad, Marcus […]

They arrived at the beach at dawn. The Family: Father, Mother, Son and Baby Girl. They enjoyed sole ownership of the beach, playing, swimming and napping as the tide rolled back. Morning settled in and […]

For most of my youth, I lived in a secure blanket of belonging. I belonged to the groups of people that surrounded me at my school and church: white Christians, married couples with children (children like me), […]

Catherine carefully dumped the coffee grounds onto the center of the front page and then folded over the four corners, making a neat bundle. Robert didn’t like to read the news and she was always ca […]

In my old age, I have become an artist’s model. Every couple of months, I remove all metal adorning my body, enter a radiation-proof inner sanctum, climb up on a conveyor belt that carries me into a cavernous […]

You have stalked about fifty agents and know what they like with their toast and where their poodles get their haircuts. The ten minutes you got to spend with some of them at writers’ conferences bought you n […]

I first read Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” when I was in college. Five American Poets was the course, taught by a ruddy-faced Midwestern professor who began class by reading aloud a poem, often reciting it from m […]

We were the ones who fell between the cracks in the social order. We loathed the popular kids—the jocks, cheerleaders, and rich kids. We pitied the stoners and the nerds. To all of them, we were invisible, s […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

A few years ago the Northumberland County prison in Sunbury, Pennsylvania burned down. It was a spectacularly awful fire of an historically neglected building. That it caught fire was of no surprise to […]

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 […]