–by Annsleigh Carter I consider January 20, 2009 my anniversary with America, and I do mean in a romantic sense. I was a freshman at American University, recently emerged from high school […]
Obama Helped Young People Like Me Love America. Now What?
Advice for Writers Getting the MFA
First of all: yes, your professors are right when they tell you it is very difficult to get a tenure track teaching job at a college or university. It is very, very […]
Turning the Tables on New Year’s Resolutions
The Facebook post of a friend, asking others to share their New Year’s Resolutions, reminded me of what I’d decided last January. I’d add one thing to my advice: congratulate yourself on […]
What Are We But a Fire?
Since the U.S. election when somehow–impossibly, it had seemed–Donald Trump became president-elect, I have been vacillating between tears and panic. Subsequent events have proven many of our fears well-founded–the rise in hate […]
Sirens’ Song/Pack’s Howl: A Ballad for our Fallen General
(By Riccardo Ghilardi photographer (own work) CC) Lisa saw my post processing the loss of author/activist/actor and General Feminist Badass Carrie Fisher yesterday, and asked me to share it here as […]
Confessions of a Christmas Letter Writer
My last Christmas letter was written a few years ago. My daughter, a freshman in high school then, read my letter and then wrote a spoof letter. When she read hers to her big brothers they laughed and laughed. I realized that my own children, who once thought the letters were special, had matured enough to know the letters were ridiculous while I, who should have long since outgrown the need to write them as a way of making myself feel better about my life, was still taking them seriously.
Transitioning Through the Holidays: A Mother Learns to Let Go
by Suzannah Gilman I have four children, all adults in their twenties now, one about to turn thirty, one married, one getting married in January, and the other two in serious […]
Confessions of a Christmas Letter Writer
There is the art of writing letters, and then there is the art of writing Christmas letters, which hardly anyone masters. To write Christmas letters, a person will ideally have a highly-refined sense of how much […]
An Ideal Christmas
This is one of my visions for an ideal Christmas. It’s a short, happy confection, a dream apart from these dire times. I hope you take some time to imagine your ideal […]
Cutting as Cleansing
A week ago*, I cut just over twelve inches of my long, curly locks off. It wasn’t the first time I’d cut off a drastic amount of hair. The first time I […]