This summer I’ll be posting here about ways to turn the summer into a DIY writing retreat: three months of prioritizing our writing life without the travel or expense or disruption of formal seclusion. Main Topics: Writing Practice, Reading as a Writer, Goals and Organization, Digital Life and Social Media
I always turned first to a column called “Was My Face Red,” in which readers shared embarrassing moments, the kind of gaffes that, as a middle-aged woman, I now wouldn’t think twice about.
Now published: FAMILY STORIES FROM THE ATTIC, anthology of prose and poetry inspired by letters, diaries, photographs, and other family papers and artifacts.
The hilly undulations of the dirt road worn hard and smooth by drought and sun were as familiar as the feel of her tongue against the grooves of the roof of her mouth…
My friend Mariam—whom I’ve met only once in person but who feels like someone I’ve known since childhood—shared a social media post* last year on her birthday that began like this: I’ve had the very best year of my life. Reading that sentence then, as it does now, gave me chills. She continued: For brief …