It feels as though writers spend too much time defending what they write. The tendency is hard to escape, no matter what genre you’re writing in. The questions creep in like shadows, stoked by The New York Times Review of Books or Salon. Isn’t the novel dying? You can’t sell a short story collection, can […]
Read more "Who Cares?"I have had an opportunity-rich life. I won the parent lottery. I lived in a wealthy enough area to go to a good pubic school, play soccer, be in a play or two, to be on student government. I went to Stanford, stayed for a Masters Degree and started my career with the auspicious network that […]
Read more "The Digital Age and Educational Opportunity"we live in body storage stacked bedrooms and balconies under grey summer skies. tufts of wild clouds hang an old man’s silvery eyebrow over the jaundiced eye of dimmed sunlight threaded with black and tangled storms. amber-lit, square windows filled with soft, rounded people in a North Chicago apartment building. multi-lingual televisions yell behind doors […]
Read more "Rainy Chicago Summer, 1980"I came to know Dorianne Laux’s poetry through a recommendation from another poet. Upon reading “The Lovers” (read it online here), I felt excited to find a writer who treated sex as more than a physical act, and in her writing as more than a cliche or a shock to get her audience’s attention. She […]
Read more "Girl on Girl: Dorianne Laux"I do this really stupid thing. I eat fruits and plants that I don’t know what they are. They remind me of something that I know I can eat, so I decide to try out this new plant I find. Eating things you can’t identify can result in extreme pain or even death (if you […]
Read more "Strawberry Tree: Don’t Stop at One"She was instantly sick. Ray made himself distraught trying to alleviate her pain. He kept opening and closing his tackle box and staring into its contents wildly. “I thought I packed Dramamine,” he muttered. Sheila rarely felt motion sickness when the two of them put out for a day of fishing in New York Bay. […]
Read more "Day Out"To the tune of “You Are My Sunshine.” Here come the boobies, the milky boobies. They’ll make you happy, and oh so glad. They’ll fill you belly, and make you merry. Drink your milk. You’ll grow big and strong. To the tune of “Oops I Did It Again.” Oops I did it again. I sprayed […]
Read more "Songs To Nurse To"If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share a story of prejudice, indiscriminate killing, and–hopefully–survival. One day, I sat in my high school library frantically searching for a topic for my science (or was it social studies?) project. This was before the Internet, so I believe I was flipping through catalogs or magazines. I found […]
Read more "Saving the Gray Wolf"A few dozen of us milled around the lobby of the Millennium Place to hear Rameen Peyrow (the founder of SATTVA Yoga in Edmonton) lecture in a small theater on the future of yoga in the west. This was one of many events at the Wanderlust Yoga and Music Festival in Whistler, British Columbia. As […]
Read more "Entitlement Wears Luon"
Visitant 