First of all, I have to be honest: I have never written a good short poem. I won’t say I “can’t,” because you never know, but the skill it takes to say […]
You’re Not Broken
Shadows of leaves shifted on the window. I sat in the worn office chair I’d inherited with the office, talking with a bright, talented student who wrote astonishing poems and had implied, […]
Literary Heroes: Eliot Rosewater and Radical Love in “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”
The world is full of suffering people. Some of us feel it more deeply than others. Empathetic souls recognize the suffering of other people—pain, hunger, poverty, displacement, fear, loss, anger, war—and it […]
Driving Solo
In my pre-teen Xanadu era, my love for music was unfettered and expansive. I sang all the time, any song I wanted, as loud as I wanted, whenever I wanted. Then something changed.
No, Jesus Was not a Zombie, and other Easter Musings
I love these questions. I love knowing that the kids are really thinking about their faith, about how it fits into the real and fictional parts of the world around them
A Brief History of Associated Writing Programs Conferences
2002: New Orleans My first AWP was a road trip with other cream city review editors from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Creative Writing Program. We rented an entire house in New Orleans […]
Build It and They Will Come, One Woman’s Dream
For the past twenty-five years, my mother has been manifesting her dream to build a Christmas wonderland farm. On five acres on the outskirts of Dallas, just across the Fannin County line, […]
The Destination, Part 4: Taormina, Sicily; The Amalfi Coast; Positano, Sorrento, and Pompeii
If this trip was a song, the verses would have been the daily experiences and the chorus would have been “I could have spent far more time there, and I was sad to have to leave.”
How to Win NaNoWriMo When You Don’t Feel So Good
I first participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2012, back when I was the faculty advisor to a creative writing club. I felt happily pressured to set an example for […]
If this were a horror story
If this were a horror story, the creamer I pour into my coffee would swirl and curdle into the form of a skull. Ted would walk into the kitchen, ask what was […]
The Gloria Sirens 