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 about foreign lives often requires research that can lead to discovery and will likely expose a writer to experiences unique to a particular culture. With the political climate in America being so polarized, we might all benefit from writers making an effort to explore the unfamiliar. Yes, one could always read a book or watch a movie and … Continue reading Writing About the Other→
Stephanie Gross was intrigued early by pictures and their stories. “I spent a lot of time as a kid looking at pictures,” she says. ”My mom was a docent at the National Gallery and she used to walk me through the West Wing. We’d look at paintings and she’d talk about their composition, how your eye moves around the frame, and about the stories they were telling. For me, it was like this giant picture book that we could walk through. I think a lot of that has stuck with me.” While first fascinated … Continue reading Telling the Story: Photos by Stephanie Gross→
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 up. I hope you’re writing, too. Why? Because of opportunities to get your work critiqued and in front of agents. Here are three such, courtesy of Brenda Drake and her website https://www.brenda-drake.com/. Brenda hasn’t asked for and doesn’t know about this free pitch. Her work has brought many writers to the attention of publishing professionals and, ultimately, to readers, and … Continue reading Resources for Writers Series: How to Avoid the Slush Pile→
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 followed up with an invitation to be on my Focus On Fiction blog, and she agreed. —Nancy Christie What is your role at Streetlight Magazine? I’ve been the fiction editor of the (beautiful) online arts journal for a year and a half. As an editor, what do you look for when deciding which piece to publish? I … Continue reading Nancy Christie Interviews Our Fiction Editor→
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 us those very mundane experiences from our childhood remain vivid and profound throughout our adult life. They seem to hold some secret, some meaning that eludes us but that we are always reaching for, reaching back into memory to bring them to life again, trying to hear what they are saying to us now. … Continue reading The Blue Shirt→
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” and hung it on her bedroom wall. Every morning it greets the daylight: the boy with his back to her as he faces the mountain and plays a flute, his body perfectly balanced on a thick tree branch that seems to slice Fuji’s heart with a rugged abandon. “In another life,” she vows, “I’ll come back as that flute, the … Continue reading Two Poems by Linda Nemec Foster→
Donald Trump said he would make America great again if he became president. Now, as his inauguration approaches, each news cycle brings further proof that if he succeeds on his own terms, the moral core of the nation will rot. What can we do besides cry foul or capitulate in cynical silence? As a spur to meaningful action, I recommend the saving words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister imprisoned in Germany in 1943 and executed by the Nazis in 1945. In his posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer writes eloquently about … Continue reading Listening to Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Hilary Holladay→
Today, as I write this, December 11, 2016, is National Noodle Ring Day. What, again? you say. So soon? But that’s how the holy days are, aren’t they, always upon us, or so it seems. I’m reminded of a wonderfully snarky thing I once saw in the New Yorker, back when the New Yorker —and maybe the whole world—used to be a lot funnier. It was one of those little squibs they then had a habit of republishing, a bit of hapless advertising copy from, I think, Goodman Noodles, that went, Vary your Lenten menu with a noodle dish a day. As if … Continue reading Noodling→
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 salt sea edge where the plankton proliferate, persist in a small shallow bay with its twisted neck to the sea, its reef a wall that holds them in. These bright, tiny organisms, single cell, simple we call them, beckon us to witness their wonder. Under wisps of night light we load into kayaks, follow one dim beacon. … Continue reading Dazzling Dinoflagellates by Martha Snell→
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