This Friday, I’m leading a workshop at the Power of Words Conference in Maine. I’m really excited to get way inside some longer form writing with a group of new people who are not yet tired of listening to me talk. Just kidding. No one ever tires of me. Right, Ma? Next week on Tuesday…
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I’ve had some writing that is really important to me accepted by two of my bucket-list publications in the last few weeks (!). One essay in particular I struggled with for months on the page and for years in my head. I’d written multiple versions that I didn’t feel great about–the logic wasn’t clear; there…
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I had another post planned. Mostly written. Maybe you’ll see it next week. But I came across this poem by Ocean Vuong, and I just have to share it with you. I spent some days in Maine with the boys this past weekend–24 hours of driving, four nights of sleeping outside, questionable hygiene practices, flip-flop straps covered…
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I just finished the novel Happy are the Happy by French writer Yasmina Reza (no relation), which is told in a series of vignettes/short stories about people who are intertwined–by relationship but less in the interiors of their minds (isn’t that always the thing) and together paint a picture of what middle-aged love looks like (lots…
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It’s been non-stop this week, in so many good ways, and I am a day late on this blog and more days late on other things. There is a short film workshop going on, and my friend Jive is in town leading it. We drive from Bethesda to Ft. Belvoir and back each day and sometimes…
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A few weekends ago my friend Ashley and I did a serious ransacking of the Takoma Park Library book sale. Rather than tackling the task of counting out all of our books, the people working the cashbox looked at our stack and estimated–it was like that. Stacks upon stacks. Among the books I brought home…
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I had such a beautiful short trip to Los Angeles with my beautiful mother. And read with some writers I was honored to be in the same room with. A really great night. On the trip, I finished reading the Art of Grace by Susan Kaufman, which had some really Interesting Ideas and a lot of repetition.…
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I don’t know what to say to frame my grief over Sunday’s shooting in Orlando, how to make sense of that kind of broken, hateful, fury. We keep saying that love will overcome everything, but reading the stories of the victims and looking at their pictures, it seems that nightclub was full of love. I…
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In case you missed the announcements here and on various social media, opportunities to hang out with me and so many poems this week: Thursday at 7:30 pm at The Potter’s House DC Friday at 7:00 pm at Washington ArtWorks (Combat Paper/Warrior Writers Exhibition and reading) I think I was nine or ten in…
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