It’s very difficult for me to understand the people, events, circumstances, and cultural detritus of my life without giving them a shape through writing. And I don’t say…
“Problems with Words” is a hermit crab essay, a term invented by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their book Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining,…
Years ago, in the messy wake of what we euphemistically call a “life event”—in my case, the end of a long relationship—at first, in mild…
Who is the betrayer? Who abandoned whom? Who no longer recognizes whom? Over the years, these questions have surfaced again and again in my writing…
I have long bristled at the suggestion that writing is therapy, and have secretly and now not so secretly, distanced myself from that notion. Writing…
Though you love life and all of its peaceable securities what is subdued in you sparks and burns with jolly brightness, and you are a…
In twenty-first century America, there is so much that holds or demands our attention without requiring it. Imagine the lecture as a radical opening.