I’m participating in a public reading on Zoom, Wednesday July 19, starting at 5 PM. I’ll read an essay titled, “I Was Lucky,” part of my story of growing up in the shadow of childhood loss. I’d love to have an audience of friends and acquaintances and readers of my blog. I’ll send out the Zoom link in a group email in a few days. To get the Zoom link, enter your email into the Email Update form on the left side of this page, which will also let you receive occasional short pieces of my writing. Thank you! Note:…
Today I met in the final Zoom session of a 10-week writing workshop program called Pocket MFA. It’s a new organization, founded by poet Joshua Roark, and I was in only the second cohort. Their goal is to provide writers an accessible, supportive version of the rigorous core of an MFA in Creative Writing. And they did. I was in a class of four writers and one teacher or “mentor.” We were trained in a specific method of giving feedback to a peer’s work: 1) Readers share moments of meaning from the work, vivid bits, parts that hit us in…
The scenarios I thought I confronted were:
1) Be erased by meeting the standards of a universe in which I can’t exist; or
2) Resist and prevent rites of passage that can neither be resisted nor prevented.
I’ve been trying to support other writers’ work in my small sphere, so why not shout out my favorite podcasts too? Here are six.
One way to build your writing community is to share and boost the work of other writers and artists. Panelists at AWP23 agreed this is one of the most rewarding activities.
As a child, I couldn’t see past the end of my nose, so my decisions didn’t always serve me as well as possible in the long run.
By the time I wanted to apply to college, which was after I’d already graduated from high school, I believed my mom had been wrong about me. I wasn’t extra smart, in fact I was unable to do what it took to really get somewhere.
The “Fran” character in my memoir goes from being a secure little girl whose boisterous, tomboy personality shines, to feeling as lost and frail as an abandoned baby animal, then through a meandering path of uncertain steps until she recognizes herself again as the smart, outspoken girl she was meant to be.
First draft completed, I’m reading through it, marking it up, and using Scrivener to outline and lay out the rewrite. It’s compelling and is the only thing I want to do these days.