The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Sudden Squall” by Judy Reeves
Leaving one’s spouse takes a lot of courage, and in the culture of the 1950s, that was even more the case. In “Sudden Squall” (Connotation Press), Judy Reeves explores a mother making that difficult choice, employing a particular sentence structure to shape the thematic content and reveal her protagonist’s character. Two
On Moving and Shaking
Most weeks since last August, I’ve taught writing with some volunteers at Orleans Parish Prison. We usually head over around midday, parking just off Canal Street and the Goodwill on Broad. Sometimes we’re asked to leave as soon as we arrive, and sometimes logistics warrant spur of the moment
Review: THE WAKE by Paul Kingsnorth
The Wake Paul Kingsnorth Graywolf, Sept 2015 365pp, $16 Buy: paperback Much has been made of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake, crowdfunded to publication in England last spring and longlisted for the Man Booker Award. Set during and after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, The Wake follows a
The Required Pain and Suffering: Writing and Love
What, if anything, does writing foreclose in life or between people? Despite probably a million compelling counter examples, famous and anecdotal, to the Plath/Hughes model of artistic-romantic implosion, a master narrative about the impossibility of loving writers and loving while a writer simply…persists. It buttresses the imagined partition between
All Rise for the Story: Writing Lessons at Jury Duty
We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the
Ornette Coleman and the Color of Fort Worth
One night in the summer before I left for college, some friends and I piled into a car outside a coffee house in Fort Worth’s museum district. I don’t remember how we ended up on the other side of downtown, in an east Fort Worth neighborhood that I had
Origin Story: Tony Tulathimutte’s Private Citizens
Tony Tulathimutte’s debut novel, Private Citizens, charts the spectacular floundering of four recent college graduates. His eye is so sharp, his characters so recognizable, and his truth so pitiless that I sometimes had to close the book, as if he might read my soul through its pages. This is
Structure: What Writers Can Learn from Visual Artists
Of all the rules that artists follow, this one is paramount: never ever fill in details before the structure is done. Painters sometimes spend hours sketching before ever touching the canvas. And when they finally do, they build their work slowly, layering in color, laboring on the drawing underneath, roughing
Reading POC is Grand but Why Aren’t We Reading Natives?
Leonardo DiCaprio called during his Golden Globes acceptance speech for viewers to deepen our appreciation and respect for First Nations tribes, and made-for-cable movies are showing Natives in a more positive, less violent light. But what about us writers and readers? Who among us is giving a shout out
Grace Paley’s “Wants”: Activism and Civic Involvement for Writers
After years of dodging PTO meetings and volunteer opportunities, I became involved in a school overcrowding issue in my town because I didn’t want my children’s class sizes to become enormous. The problem seemed simple at first, but soon enough I was attending school committee meetings, spending hours