Author Archive
The Landscape of Memory
For most of us, memory supplies meaning and connection to our past selves, our place of origin, a greater world. Memory gives us meaning.
The Power of Reading
For Ocean Vuong, Jesmyn Ward, and Jaquira Diaz, reading and writing became necessities early on when their classrooms, families, and streets confined them, left them feeling othered and uncertain of their identities.
Bipolar Disorder and the Pills that Keep Us Alive
For bipolar disorder, the most tried and true treatment—the most effective one—doesn’t come from a lab; it comes from stardust. It’s an element on the periodic table, atomic number 3.
“I no longer think the driving force of books is to tell everyone that everything will get better”: An Interview with Sarah Rose Etter
Etter joins a legacy of women writers who depict the horror of women’s experiences.
Language and Trauma in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Little Dog, the narrator of Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, learns to be strategic in his use of language as a means of self-preservation.
Donald Hall, Sharon Olds, and Dani Shapiro on Marriage
I stumbled across Donald Hall’s “The Third Thing,” an essay on his marriage to fellow poet Jane Kenyon, before my wedding. Hall’s measured tone and rich details came in sharp contrast to all of the bridal materials I was bombarded with, and brought marriage back to life for me.
Jane Alison and Ander Monson on Narrative Form
The arc can only take narrative so far before it crashes, particularly when it comes to personal writing.
Women Inventing Feminine Language
To talk about women’s language as wounded is problematic because for so long women’s wounds were either taboo or fetishized. In order to avoid this fetishizing, women find new means of expression by writing outside of existing structures.
The Structure of Trauma
What is interesting about trauma narratives, despite their abundance, is how writers shape them, allowing their stories to transcend the act of recounting.
Women in Myths
In such ancient stories as The Odyssey, women, who are often archetypes and who typically exist in the margins, are enlivened when their stories are told by contemporary writers, freeing them from their limited roles