Where else can a firey-eyed cabaret singer and composer eat Gummi Bears, drink wine, and talk books with a 90-year-old gem-of-a-poet? Where else can that same poet ride an exercise bike in the [...]
It’s been a fulfilling three weeks. I’ve applied for three fellowships, submitted to four literary magazines, and maintained my editing duties all the while. The fellowship applications, of [...]
It’s darn near impossible to capture the fleeting yet meaningful connections forged at a place like VCCA, but picture this: we’re all situated around the fireplace after dinner, [...]
Readers, in a rare use of my blog as a platform for fiction, and in an attempt to spread the word about this competition (which requires a post for entry), I’m sharing this odd little [...]
It’s another dinner at VCCA, with four round tables filled with artist chatter, people getting up and down for seconds or dessert, and miraculously this evening–wine on every table. [...]
I gave a guest lecture at Sweet Briar College last week to two classrooms of freshman English students. Or maybe I should say freshwomen, since it is, after all, an all-girls school. In either [...]
And so they leave: Goodbye Mark. Goodbye Sharon. Goodbye Ronit, Martha, Belle. Goodbye dear poet Marjorie. But hello! Hello Conrad Hilberry, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Masha Hamilton, and (OMG!) Alice [...]
{Part 1 and Part 2 of this essay were published last week.} For the first time since I began writing fiction (in 2008), I’m allowing sentences like this one: “It made him want another [...]
News Flash: THE CLAW and I were featured on “View from the Keyboard” this week! I began by studying Lorraine Adams’ latest collection of interconnected short stories, The Room [...]
To be fair, it started in August. I received feedback from two literary agents that even though the writing in my war manuscript was strong and “you’re obviously a talented [...]